Boost performance with an LMS
December 21, 2021
Disruptive forces are forcing us to change the way we do business. To stay in the game, we have to perform better. When you’re looking for ways to support and boost your performance it’s good to have an LMS on your side.
The quest for better performance
With a looming skills gap and good prospects for top performers to move elsewhere, businesses need to hold on to employees and make the most of their potential. Continual churn and the need to hire in talent are costs you can do without. So, you need to incentivize people to stay and find ways of getting the most out of them, for mutual benefit.
But first there are obstacles to overcome and challenges to meet. How do you offer employees development and progression? How do you up/reskill people? How do you get them to invest in business in the way that repays your investment in them? How do you keep company and personal goals aligned?
These are old questions, but new technology has given us better means of addressing them. And when it comes to motivating, training, and enabling people to perform better a Learning Management System is a piece of learning technology that can make a demonstrable difference.
LMS features to aid performance
An LMS offers an array of features that help increase and sustain performance levels. It provides support at every stage of the journey from planning through implementation to evaluation. It’s right there where it’s needed in the workflow and, crucially, enables people to keep performing while they’re learning.
– Getting off to a good start – Learning pathways
If you’re going to improve performance you’ve got to know where you are and where you want to get to. A skills inventory is a good place to start. Managers and employees review the skills they have and those they need. This information can be created, stored, and accessed using the LMS. Learning plans and pathways can be developed as the skills gaps and opportunities are identified and aligned with business objectives. This is just the beginning of an ongoing dialogue between management and employees recorded in your LMS. It makes progression and development transparent and gives everyone a stake in shaping the goals and making them work.
– It’s for me – Personalization of learning
Skills analysis recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of individuals. To maximize their potential, you need to provide learning that is tailored to their needs. This means personalizing the learning experience and giving individuals access and control over their training. With its ability to store learning assets in a wide range of formats and make them searchable and deliverable on all connected devices the LMS provides learning on demand, supplied wherever it’s needed. Giving employees control of what, where, and how they receive training gives them skin in the game and underlines the investment and support the organization is providing for them.
– Rewarding performance – Digital badging and CPD
Digital awards and certification keep people motivated and recognize milestones and achievement. They are clear and transferable tokens of success. They mark progress along the learning path. Introducing your own CPD or affiliating with an industry approved CPD scheme provides further opportunities for individual development and another source of recognition of performance. Both digital badging and CPD schemes can be delivered by your LMS. Results and progress are displayed on dashboards accessible to both learners and managers. An LMS-based CPD system allows learners to receive and submit assignments and upload reflections from internal and external CPD schemes all tracked by the LMS.
– Reviewing performance – Analytics
An LMS linked to a Learning Record Store (LRS) can collect, analyze, and output granular data from a wide variety of interactions, both formal and informal. This data can be represented in easily customizable reports and dashboards accessible to both managers and employees. Employees see a record of their own performances, plans and goals. Managers can view aggregated data that allows them to make critical interventions when gaps in performance arise and schedule check-ins online. This comprehensive data and analysis provide the basis for 360-degree performance reviews matched to the organization’s goals and allows employees to request feedback making performance reviews a two-way street, employee and manager learning from one another. Analytics provide the feedback L&D requires to measure the effectiveness of training and provide new or repurposed resources to meet training challenges.
– Driving performance – Automation
Automation can improve efficiency. The LMS has several built-in features that can automate mundane but time-consuming tasks. These include a system of alerts and reminders via email or texts to complete tasks or enroll in courses. Notifications inform people of impending deadlines or upcoming assessments and assignments. Recommendations based on an employee’s history of interactions with the LMS suggest content that is relevant to the individual’s learning path. Automation helps nudge learners and encourage positive behaviors.
– Supporting performance – Learner-centric training
LMSs don’t just manage learning they deliver content that enables people to unlock their potential and to keep performing. A customized LMS becomes the go-to place for support whether in the office, factory, call center, on the road, or working remotely. It delivers approved training materials at the point of need. This allows employees to learn and apply that learning rather than disappear into the classroom. Digitized learning is available in a variety of formats using a mix of media and learning strategies to engage learners. Bringing learning into the workflow saves time and places it in context. It encourages the immediate application of training on the job. Use of microlearning and spaced practice helps keep skills levels up and improves the acquisition rates of new skills. Customizable interfaces help create campaigns to improve learning experiences. Social media features like posting messages and feedback help create a social learning environment where knowledge is freely shared.
– From onboarding to performing: Tracking and enabling progress
The effectiveness of any training program depends on the availability and reliability of data. A key feature of an LMS is its ability to collect, store, track, and output critical data. This can then be visualized and analyzed using analytical tools like customizable reports and dashboards. This ability to track progress moment by moment and interaction by interaction means your LMS can chart the arc of an employee’s progress from the early stages of onboarding through the of performing the role they were hired to do and beyond to the new skills and roles they acquire as they develop. What’s more, easy access to key data not only allows you to keep people on track and operating compliantly but also forms the basis for further progression and enhanced performance as they mature and develop. And it doesn’t just apply on an individual level. Aggregated data allows managers, HR and L&D to see at a glance trends and effectiveness of your learning initiatives. This data can then fuel and inform future training campaigns. With the information it delivers and the learning it provides an LMS provides holistic training to fast-track people from onboarding to performing. It provides the insights and vision to make training work.
Boost performance with an LMS – The way forward
We all desire to perform better, but to do it we need training and support. Not just once in a while, but constantly, wherever we may be working. Traditional training models are too inflexible, time-consuming, and inefficient to pass muster in today’s business environment. We need a new solution appropriate for the age. Fortunately, LMSs give us one. An LMS is flexible, powerful, efficient and makes the best use of new technology and modern ways of finding, accessing, and consuming information.
In a world full of data and hungry for more, the LMS with its huge capacity provides both the data and the tools to interpret it and act on it – just in time. It allows you to better channel your learning and reap the rewards on investment by making training more effective, efficient, and sustainable.
An LMS doesn’t just serve up learning; it increases the pool of in-house talent and helps identify future leaders. Research tells us that better trained employees perform better. The LMS is the way forward to that happy state of continuous learning and enhanced performance.
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