LMS for corporate training? You’re better off using a learning platform!

Author:
Gary
PUBLISHED ON:
October 13, 2020
June 26, 2023
PUBLISHED IN:
Learning And Development

Have you ever walked into a shop for one thing and left with something even better that you hadn’t even thought of? Well, that’s about to happen again right now. Yes, you came for a learning management system (LMS) that would drive your corporate training, but a learning platform will help you do it in a way that engages employees, gives them the tools to learn for themselves and offers so much more!

Why a learning platform trumps a learning management system in corporate training

The basic principles are the same, by moving to e-learning you’re removing the physical and geographical barriers to training, meaning there’s more freedom and lower costs. But, who wants basic? An LMS has the top-down structure of assigning courses that need to be completed, with employees only really applying learnings after they’ve completed it. Essentially you’ve just swapped the classroom for an online portal and there’s still a student-teacher vibe.

In learning platforms, everybody is both student and teacher and able to find resources for themselves whenever they need to. Instead of knowledge being confined to one system, these tools interact with other applications and create content libraries that make internal and external resources searchable. They also allow people to contribute knowledge and content they found useful, enabling a culture where you’re all learning from each other.

The benefits of platforms for corporate learning

Personalised learning pathways

We need to cover this first because it influences so much of how a learning platform can supercharge your corporate learning experiences. Having access to high-quality external and internal content means you can set up learning pathways tailored to someone’s role, skills they’d like to develop and personal traits they’re keen to improve.

Most importantly, you can customise it for that person. If you know that they’re visual learners, include a webinar! If they’ve got a long drive to the office, is there a podcast they could listen to en route? Typically, a learning management system wouldn’t allow you to do this or empower mobile learning.  

Better onboarding experiences

If your welcome at the company feels slick, engaging and more personal, you’re more likely to feel positive and productive as you settle in. If it’s a case of ‘here’s a course, let us know when you’ve finished it’, you’ll probably be having second thoughts! Tap into the benefits of a corporate learning technology and you’ll be noticing onboarding smiles, not receiving people’s notice…

As well as personalising their onboarding process, connect them with knowledgeable colleagues and the insights they’ve shared. They’ll not only get to know the company and their role, but they’ll learn about the people too! It’s also you saviour for ensuring their resources arrive right on time, as you can automate delivery to the learner based on criteria you select. If you’re not early, you’re late—especially when it comes to your new joiners.

Compliance training that connects

Make the mandatory manageable and a lot more interesting! If there was ever one part of corporate L&D that needed a makeover, it’s compliance training. They’re important, need to be completed accurately, and yet they always feel like an onslaught of one-hour videos and never-ending articles.

Why not break those up with some quick recap videos or a quiz that reinforces the key points? With more content types and providers available, you should consider those best suited to your compliance course and learners before creating it. It should be based on how they’ll learn and retain the information best. If you were to use HowNow, people would even be able to share their thoughts and advice on topics within the course, without having to leave the platform!

Upskilling and closing skill gaps

Wouldn’t it be handy to understand which skills you need to develop and track progress towards those skills? It would certainly help close any skill gaps! While a learning management system focuses on the courses people complete, learning platforms are all about the skills they develop. Most allow you to measure current proficiency and deliver a course that levels up members of your team. In HowNow, we even analyse live job roles to help you benchmark and identify in-demand skills.

Better assessments: quizzes, practice scenarios and more

If you needed damning evidence of why the ‘course, test, apply’ model doesn’t really work, look no further than the statistics below. Although you might want to sit down first… The point is that people typically forget a lot of what they’ve learnt! So the onus is on you to make the assessments in your courses more engaging to help that knowledge. Or, even better, ensure that the key points are available to access any time.

  • Within one hour, people retain less than half of the information presented.
  • Within 24 hours, people forget more than 70 percent of new information.
  • Within one week, people forget 90% of it.

Source: Learning Solutions

Let’s say you’re creating a course on a particular product. Maybe it ends with a quiz that’s available as a resource once they’ve completed it, making the key questions and answers easy to find. Or maybe it’s sales training, and the best way to retain the tips and develop the skills is through practice scenarios. Why not incorporate them into the course AND make them available any time after? Practice makes perfect!

Learning in the flow of work

We’ve covered a lot of this already, but when people can find knowledge in the moments of need, it makes them better at their job. A customer service team is a perfect example of this. If the knowledge they need is locked away in an LMS, they’ll struggle to present an informed and convincing argument to potential customers. However, if they can access resources at any time, they’ll be able to bat away questions at ease and create more meaningful experiences for clients and prospects.

Share knowledge, learn from each other

Again, we’re repeating ourselves a little bit here. But it’s important to highlight that sometimes the best resource is somebody in your team! If there’s a colleague that’s super efficient at adding new customers to your system, they should be sharing their tips with everyone else. And that’s what a learning platform allows you to do! We like to call them nuggets in HowNow, and not just because sharing knowledge tastes so good…

Sceptical? We get it, talk is cheap! But trialling HowNow is completely free, and you can book a demo with us first if you want to discuss your corporate learning needs.

Check out our other learning management system (LMS) resources