How big and how fast your business grows depends in part on the extent to which your people grow and develop. It is therefore of unprecedented importance to continuously stimulate this growth and development.
You also invest in the growth and development of your organization. But continuous learning also requires continuous attention and that means quite a bit.
In an earlier blog, we already gave you five reasons to be unburdened in the field of knowledge development. Working with a Learning Management System (LMS) also supports you in developing your people.
What to pay attention to when choosing LMS?
But what should you consider when choosing an LMS? Practice shows that this is not even that easy.
Below you will receive 10 tips from us that you should pay attention to.
1. All content available through one portal
If you are looking for a Learning Management System, make sure that you can access all content via one portal. That way you only have to log in once. We don't need to explain to anyone how annoying it is to keep looking – in your brain, in your password vault or between your post-its – for the right password at the right site.
By choosing an LMS where all content can be found in an environment, that is a thing of the past. It gives your users a better experience, making them come back faster. And so will learn more and more pleasantly.
2. Progress information and reports
With a good LMS, both the employee and the manager always receive up-to-date, extensive and reliable information about the progress. An employee is thus kept informed of his or her own progress, while the manager knows how his or her team is doing and can discuss this periodically.
By being able to request reports yourself – or receive them at fixed times in your mailbox – you always have insight into study hours and results. This directly saves time and therefore indirectly also money.
3. Organize knowledge sessions
How do you stimulate your employees to share knowledge with each other and thus learn at work? You do this by organizing knowledge sessions, among other things.
A good LMS supports this by offering a function with which you – as a manager or as an employee – can create knowledge sessions and invite employees or colleagues to register.
Preferably, it is possible to manage how many people can register, who is present at the session and to schedule multiple dates for a knowledge session.
4. Smart search functionality
A serious LMS has a wide range of training courses, e-books, videos and other knowledge sources. Just find your way around it. A clear navigation structure helps, but with smart search functionality and good filter options you will certainly find what you need in no time.
5. Learning community
Whether your employees like to study in a classroom setting or prefer to hide in their study room only-the-lonely, everyone sometimes has a substantive question or wants to contact a fellow student. Therefore, check whether the LMS you have in mind also offers the possibility to get in touch with the community, whether they are colleagues from the same organization or students who follow the same course.
6. Map out learning pathways
Just taking a course is of course fine. Whatever someone learns, it always contributes to development. But it is even better to work towards a set goal and to think in advance what the road to that goal looks like.
Such a learning path can be put together based on the individual needs of an employee or linked to the development objectives of the organization. Therefore, check whether the LMS offers the possibility to map out a learning path: a clear and goal-oriented path to success.
This way you will find training and learning materials that are relevant for a learning path clearly arranged together.
7. Own house style and content
If you as a company opt for an LMS, make sure that you can get the environment in your own house style and that you can add your own content, varying from general texts to motivate and direct your employees to your own learning resources, learning paths, etc. knowledge sessions and your own organizational structure with teams and managers.
This way your employees feel at home in their learning environment.
8. Diversity of learning resources
Check whether the LMS you have in mind offers enough learning resources. We are not only referring to the number of training courses, but also to the diversity in the offer. Think of classroom training, online training, virtual labs, e-books, audiobooks, book summaries, microlearnings, but also mock exams and teacher support.
9. Mobile friendly
Perhaps unnecessary, but check whether the LMS is also mobile-friendly. This way, your employees can also quickly dive into the study on the train, plane, in the toilet or in the waiting room at the dentist.
10. Manage training budget
It will of course save you a lot of time and – double – administration if you can also set and manage your training budget via your LMS! Here you can read what the conditions are for a good training budget.
Curious?
Above you have read 10 tips that are obvious to us. Yet there are many other services and functionalities that can be devised for a powerful LMS. Curious what these are and what HR Consultant UK and our Continuous Learning 3C model can mean for your organization? Feel free to contact us on 026 – 2051333 or info@mycademy.com. We like to think along with you!