A learning management system could be the key to improving your organisation’s training programmes and ensuring you can demonstrate compliance. A learning management system (LMS) supports organisation-wide learning and development, including document management and employee monitoring to ensure that training is effectively delivered.
The popularity of eLearning has grown significantly, with most organisations using a form of eLearning in their training. Research has found that eLearning has become a key tool in effective organisation-wide, multi-channel learning to support compliance objectives and facilitate improved health and safety outcomes within the workplace. Over 80% of organisations use online training as part of their compliance activities.
If an employer wants to meet their legal obligations and ensure that their workforce is thoroughly trained and competent with the most up-to-date knowledge, a Learning Management System helps maximise the benefits of delivering training.
What is a learning management system?
An LMS is a software as a service (SaaS) that enables organisations to store, manage, and deliver training courses, other educational courses, performance analysis checks and widespread development programmes. It can be accessed entirely online as a cloud-based system, although some platforms can be installed on an organisation’s servers.
An LMS can host a range of training – online lessons as well as facilitating face-to-face and instructor-led training – covering a diverse range of topics such as occupational health and safety to food safety. It is a flexible approach that modernises organisational learning while providing a central resource to create, deploy and monitor training and learning outcomes.
A prime example of a cloud-based LMS is SHINE. It’s our state-of-the-art, powerful, fully interactive LMS and assessment centre. Logos, colours and graphs can be tailored to a style that best fits your organisation, allowing for a customised learning platform to be created.
The benefits of a learning management system
Using a learning management system delivers a range of benefits to organisations – from flexible, accessible learning platforms to compliance and reduced learning and development costs.
Compliance requirements
Training employees, managers and contractors is a legal requirement, depending on the size and sector of your organisation. An LMS can include access to courses, along with training records that allow organisations to provide evidence to support compliance requirements.
SHINE has access to an extensive library of IOSH Approved and CPD Certified compliance courses and a dashboard that can be tailored to compliance requirements for individuals, teams, divisions and across an entire organisation.
Flexible learning
An effective LMS supports a variety of training approaches, including different types of learning such as face-to-face, classroom, instructor-led, webinar and individual eLearning courses. This allows organisations to develop a blended approach to training, tailoring learning and development to best suit employee needs.
Scheduling, lesson invites, and self-enrollment features reduce administration overheads, while features such as deploying pre-reading materials and recording post-learning feedback help ensure organisations can continuously improve L&D approaches.
Ease of access
An LMS gives your employees the ability to access training anytime from internet-connected devices such as laptops and tablets. Online courses can be accessed from employee dashboards, with reminders, self-enrolment, and progress reports visible to employees.
Access to learning can be tailored to match employee availability and location, such as supporting remote workers who can learn at their own pace from home. Employees can bookmark progress and return to continue training later and from a different location.
Central organisation
Using an LMS means you can store all training programmes, training records, competence checks, risk assessments and progress reports in one place. SCORM compliant courses can be uploaded to an LMS such as SHINE, allowing all training records to be centrally stored.
SCORM is a set of technical standards for eLearning products. This means additional SCORM compliant courses can be uploaded and integrated into the platform so you can keep track of all training records in one place.
Lowered costs
Using an LMS as your training platform can save you the costs of employing training specialists that only offer face-to-face training. It can also reduce the cost of resources, facilities, and expenses usually incurred when conducting training through the deployment of online courses.
Progress monitoring
An LMS isn’t just useful for providing your employees with training courses. They can also be used to track your employees’ progress through the available training and see where strengths and weaknesses are. Team and department goals can be tracked to ensure that the training required for compliance is completed.
Employee engagement
Digital learning management systems can offer additional features and incentives to boost employee engagement. Tools such as gamification and awards, including badges and certificates, can be used to bolster employee take-up of training. Gamification, where employees, teams and departments can be scored based on training completion can foster healthy organisational competition and help to increase completion rates.
