What Does a Learning Management System (LMS) Do?

Learning management systems have a wide variety of capabilities. From helping maintain compliance to making training easier, they can greatly improve the employee experience. In nearly every organization, employees or volunteers undergo training for compliance purposes. LMS programs can make compliance management much easier by allowing employers to assign specific compliance courses to employees or volunteers and track their completion. One of the greatest strengths of learning management systems is the ability to organize and administer training material. These capabilities allow employers to better understand where their employees are in the training process and determine what they need. Systems with a mobile learning option are a great way to allow employees to complete their training almost anywhere.

Best Practices for Effectively Using a Learning Management System (LMS)

Relying entirely on an LMS to run on its own is not enough. To effectively utilize a system for training, it is recommended to ask for feedback about the system, choose your system intentionally, find ways to make it fun and promote your system within your organization to build momentum. Like any HR process, feedback can be a great tool to understand what is and isn’t working. Being intentional with your LMS decisions can greatly increase the impact of your system. It may also be beneficial to cater decisions to your audience. If your team responds well to competitions and games, finding an LMS that allows you to gamify training material would greatly increase engagement. Training programs can be tedious and take a lot of effort from employees. Making training material fun can relieve some of the burden and employee boredom, which will likely increase engagement. Internal promotion is possibly the most important best practice for utilizing an LMS, as your LMS will not be as effective in engaging employees in their training material if they don’t know about it. By getting managers, leaders and frontline employees excited about using your LMS, it will be much easier to implement the training.

Tips for Choosing the Right Learning Management System (LMS)

It can be overwhelming to research the many options out there to find the right learning management system. Here are three tips for choosing the best LMS for you.

Tip 1: Identify Your Needs and Objectives

• Do you need to train for compliance, develop leaders, upskill your team, or something else? 

• Do you have a price range?

• Do you want to improve employee training engagement? 

• Do you need to develop more material? 

• Do you want to organize your content in a better way?

Tip 2: Determine Your Options

There are many options out there. Take the time to research which option will fit your needs the best. 

Tip 3: Keep Your Audience in Mind

Consider what engages your team.

• Are they driven by growth opportunities? 

• Do they respond well to competition? 

• Are your employees more analytically minded or are they more creative?