If you’re tasked with creating an employee training program, you know it can be a tall order. Employee training needs to meet specific and measurable corporate goals while being engaging and interesting for learners. You need to create learning content quickly without getting lost down formatting rabbit holes. You also need a reliable way to facilitate learner-instructor communication to give every learner the best chance of success.
Whew! No wonder you need a coffee!
Luckily, learning management systems (LMS) can fulfil each of those requirements and more. In this blog, we’ll discuss the five things every training program should have and how an LMS helps you offer them.
Selecting an LMS for successful employee training
It’s a truth universally recognized that a successful training program is in want of a learning management system.
But to find the best learning management system for your needs, you should understand the elements of a successful training program. To meet business requirements and earn high marks on learner engagement, skills training programs should include these five elements, all of which can be provided by comprehensive learning management systems:
1. Mixed media content
Engaging training programs should incorporate various training materials, including videos, webinars, slide decks, and everyone’s favourite learning tool – funny cat memes. 😉
But seriously, variety is the spice of both life and learning, so online courses should include a wide variety of media. For some modules, you’ll want to use live video conferencing. For others, video instructions may make the most profound impression on your learners.
You should mix up your course assignments, too, through an assortment of activities. An LMS allows adding quizzes, tests, and other tasks. You can add a task at any point in your course or module to keep learners engaged and check that they are progressing toward learning milestones.
Training programs with the highest success rates have the most thoughtful, well-rounded mixtures of learning content. So be sure to mix up the course content and keep your learners on their toes.
2. Simple course creation and delivery
So far, we’ve focused a lot on the learner’s experience in a training program. But the course creator is part of the equation, too, and their needs should be considered in designing a solid training process.
Ideally, your skills development programs would be simple to create and customise. In the right LMS, creating templates for courses you regularly build and setting default branding options for an unlimited number of user groups is easy. That way, branding and messaging stay consistent no matter which audience you’re teaching.
Courses may need to be updated, such as required changes to compliance training or sales training. Using a robust LMS, you can make changes on the fly, even while a course is live, or institute changes across several courses simultaneously.
You may want to segment your training into several courses, and an LMS allows you to do so. You can organise your courses into learning journeys that require learners to meet educational targets before moving on to the next course in their journey. And because journeys are automated, you can initiate training and let the LMS do the rest.
Plus, each of these features also benefits learners and makes your online course a more enjoyable experience. With consistent branding and efficient course delivery, learners can engage in a familiar learning experience that moves at the right pace.
3. Solid communication between employees and instructors
Education is most effective when it involves clear communication. A good training process encourages discourse on ideas and soft skills like communication, so you should include avenues for collaborative learning in your training process.
If you’re using an LMS, communication is facilitated by direct in-app messaging and group discussion forums. As the administrator, you can create discussion groups based on which course a learner is taking or which department they’re in. You can allow instructors to stoke conversation with questions or polls to their learner groups, and learners can ask their instructor or fellow learners to clarify assignments or chat about the day’s lessons.
A directory of users allows learners to find one another quickly if they need to discuss their online courses. And if you want to send marketing emails to interest employees in new courses, you can send those through your LMS.
4. Gamification to keep employee training programs lively
Gamification makes training more exciting for your learners. You can automate gamification in an LMS to be part of every module, course, or journey. That way, learners can enjoy the thrill of friendly competition without course creators needing to facilitate the contest.
An LMS lets you add gamification features like leaderboards and certificates to your online training. You can choose to promote group learning by rewarding groups whose members complete the most modules or earn the highest scores on their post-course tests. Or you can encourage healthy interoffice competition by pitting each department’s members against one another in a race to the top of the leaderboard.
You can offer tangible rewards to the winners, like gift certificates or a complimentary box of baked treats. But often, friendly competition is its own reward, and learners are incentivised by seeing their names at the top of the leaderboard, even if it doesn’t earn them a cupcake.
5. Opportunities for analysis and reporting
Business stakeholders need to know whether your training meets their learning outcome goals, and an LMS helps you track and report on those metrics.
The right LMS will offer reports that you can customise to answer stakeholder questions and the ability to download them. A metrics dashboard will let you analyse whether each course or module meets learners’ needs. And you should be able to drill down to monitor individual learners to ensure they are learning at pace with their peers and hitting educational targets.
How to choose an LMS platform
While each business will have distinct needs, every skills training course can benefit from an LMS that offers these key features:
- Simple-yet-powerful course creation
- Effective course organisation and delivery options
- Best-in-class reporting and analytics tools
LearnRight earns high marks on all three, making it the perfect online learning tool to train employees successfully. You can see our brilliant features in action by booking a demo of the software.
