Three practical ways to leverage your learning management system software

Employees want training opportunities; businesses need tech that delivers

The talent marketplace is in the middle of a disruptive period — where offering flexible working is no longer enough to retain employees, increased wages are proving unsustainable, and L&D teams are faced with mounting challenges across all stages of the employee lifecycle.

“Each business has different needs, varying levels of resources [across HR and L&D teams], and a diverse set of objectives,” says Andrea Matkin, LMS sales manager at Digits. “A key trend we’ve identified is the need for an enterprise learning platform that can be scaled, meet the needs of employees (from onboarding through to upskilling and everything in between), as well as move the business closer toward its goals. That’s a tall order in anyone’s books, but it’s not impossible.

“This demand [for robust learning tech] is only going to increase as businesses continue to look for better ways to train, retain and develop their in a highly competitive market. Learning technology has the potential to satisfy all these needs – but only if organisations know how to make the best use of it.”

Matkin adds: “Understanding the capabilities of your learning technology determines how successful you are in delivering talent strategies. It’s never been more important to have the right tech, to know how to use it, and to have the right people in the driving seat.”

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how Digits LMS delivers on these points, and how our award-winning enterprise learning platform can help your organisation identify and address skills gaps, enable succession planning, and build meaningful networks.

1.     Analyse skills gaps and deliver personalised learning

Skills gap analysis

Digits LMS has a skills gap analysis tool that enables you to leverage your competency frameworks to highlight talent gaps and identify where best to focus training efforts.

This can be used as part of your recruitment or onboarding strategy to identify how much training a new starter might need, or as a continuous professional development tool to enable employees to be the best they can be in their current roles.

Conducting a skills gap analysis helps employees to identify their transferable skills, empowering people to confidently advocate for internal promotions while enabling L&D teams to map out succession plans and fill vacancies.

A skill gap analysis will also identify areas for improvement; Digits LMS can automatically recommend relevant and suitable training activities to the learner should they fall below the benchmark on a particular skill.

Discover our skills gap analysis software

Blended learning

Also known as hybrid learning, this approach comprises various activities and content types, including eLearning, video audio, quizzes and more.

Blended learning is a great way to offer mandatory compliance training and present company policies to new starters. A quick quiz can confirm if they’ve understood key guidelines, or redirect them to learning activities to revise any missed points. Blended learning can also be used to schedule a series of induction workshops introducing new starters to their peers and helping them to learn more about different business functions and units.

Existing employees can use blended learning to complete eLearning activities and attend workshops to help address skill gaps — which can then be signed off by a manager following completion of an assessment or on-the-job training module.

Rules and logic can be built into blended learning plans to ensure learners complete pre-requisite training, are directed on to the next relevant stage of the pathway, or are even made exempt from learning if they have demonstrated pre-existing knowledge.

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2.     Enable succession planning and talent retention

Learning management system software is not limited to supporting new starters and improving skills in existing employees. Along with other functions, an LMS can become an invaluable asset in your talent retention and succession planning strategy.

If an employee has reached the top of their game in their role, or indicates a desire to explore other career options, you’ll need to have robust progression plans in place if you’re to retain this key member of staff. Comprehensive succession planning activities enable organisations to provide more opportunities for upskilling and career development, which underpins staff retention and a reduced turnover. This works by leveraging competency frameworks, on-the-job training, and mentoring schemes to prepare employees for their next step.

While you might conduct reviews and monitor staff turnover and development needs within your HR solution, an LMS can close that loop by offering learning opportunities in line with set objectives, training and development needs, and progress. This can then be discussed as part of your continuous review process.

By integrating your LMS with your HR solution, as we do with Digits LMS and our CIPHR Connect (HR software) platform, you create a powerful tool that employees and their managers can use to track progress and access required learning — all within one system.

Helping employees take the next step

The skills gap analysis tool can help with identifying employees who are ready for the next step in their career by highlighting training they need to complete to achieve a promotion, or perhaps recognising transferable skills that would make them a great fit for a lateral move.

By assigning a ‘management’ framework for someone looking to become a first-time line manager, you’ll be able to, for example, identify them as having great delegation skills but requiring upskilling in their leadership abilities.

Based on the results, the next step might be to assign a management learning pathway which could include an on-the-job training module, or an assessment to enable the employee’s manager to sign them off as having completed the relevant training.

Celebrate achievements

Recognising employee achievements is key in providing a sense of progress and rewarding learning to keep motivation high.

Digits LMS’ advanced rules engine can be leveraged to automatically award achievements or direct the learner to the next level of training based on their results or progress.

You can also use gamified learning techniques – awarding customisable badges, certificates, and reward points for completed activities and programmes. Notification pop-ups will alert users to achievements, while leaderboards can help motivate learners and create a healthy sense of competition.

To take it further, consider calibrating learning results with business metrics to measure the efficacy of the learning and ensure it supports employees in the right way to deliver on business objectives.

Request a demo to see Digits’ gamified learning in action

3.     Build coaching, mentoring, and knowledge networks

Learning doesn’t need to be solely dependent on the content and programmes within your LMS. Your organisation is a knowledge base, filled with people of varying degrees of experience across different specialisms who can add value to their colleagues’ learning.

An enterprise learning platform such as Digits LMS can help facilitate and manage this knowledge exchange by creating meaningful internal networks. These networks will not only promote collaboration and creativity, but will also help to create a connected workforce. Regardless of the type of grouping, these networks are a great way to cultivate a culture of learning.

Create mentoring networks

Mentoring relationships can span from ad-hoc conversations over a cup of coffee, to formalised programmes with set objectives. While the former is difficult to plan, and rarely yields defined outcomes, the latter has proven to be effective and can be further enhanced using learning platforms.

The mentoring function in Digits LMS can help employees more easily seek out colleagues within defined areas of expertise with whom they can connect to get advice and support.

This feature not only allows employees to nominate themselves to become a mentor, but also enables individuals to search for and connect with a company-wide repository of mentors. Individuals can arrange meetings and capture notes from conversations within the LMS – keeping everything in one place and building on the growing knowledge base.

This can become an invaluable resource for employees who are looking to progress in their career, allowing them to tap into expertise across your organisation to get a range of advice on areas that will help with their professional development.

Peer-to-peer exchange

During the onboarding process — especially when new starters are being inducted within a remote or hybrid environment — it can be challenging for them to connect with their peers.

Discussion groups are a great way to address this challenge because they facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of ideas and best practices. Adding new starters to specific discussion channels enables (and encourages) them to ask questions, get to know their colleagues, and learn the proverbial ropes.

Equally, this tool can also be embedded within your wider L&D strategy to help build a strong culture of learning across your organisation — either by creating open groups around relevant topics like product ‘knowledge hubs’ or industry trends — open for anyone to join, or by assigning learners to closed groups following attendance at a workshop — such as leadership training or health and safety, or even completion of a key learning pathway completed via online learning.

Peer-to-peer exchange supports the ideals of social learning and opens the floor for discussion among like-minded employees, those with specific goals or objectives, and even as an ice-breaker to help new starters ease into the onboarding process.

Share expertise

Knowledge base hubs are a great way for your subject matter experts to create and share meaningful articles on topics that are of interest and relevance to other employees. This provides another resource for learners that is accessible on demand and indexed by keyword, category, or competency. Examples could include a simple series of help guides to support product or service knowledge, a range of ‘top tips’ for specialist roles, or even wider industry-based knowledge pieces that help employees stay up to date with the latest developments.

New starters can use the knowledge base to familiarise themselves with different areas of the business most relevant to them — at a pace that suits their learning style. They can always refer to an article on demand, helping them avoid ‘information overload’.

Sharing expertise is also helpful for existing employees; they’ll either benefit from learning new information, or being able to share their proficiency and experience. Organisations looking to foster a culture of learning can use shared expertise to encourage existing colleagues to look at learning as a never-ending journey.

All these functions help embed learning into the ‘every day,’ making opportunities to learn more accessible and varied for all employees.

Digits’ enterprise learning platform can do it all — and much more

An LMS — Digits LMS — is all of these things and so much more. It can help you support every employee, move you closer to your organisational goals, and scale at a pace suitable for your needs. Over and above all the points we’ve already discussed, Digits LMS can help you:

• Move from ‘push’ to ‘pull’ learning – with self-service options including learning libraries, classroom booking functionality, and easy access to dashboards and reports
• Create a well-rounded, engaging learning experience – with visual learning journeys, badges and rewards, push notifications
• Take learning beyond compliance – with the flexibility to create multiple pathways to assign activities based on role and hierarchy
• Save valuable time in the delivery and management of learning — access reports and dashboards at the click of a button, and stay in the loop with automated workflows and notifications

Are you ready to explore how you can take your LMS beyond just a repository of compliance training that resides only within the domain of HR and L&D, to a full self-service tool with which all employees can access and engage, to help with not only their development but also that of their teams?

By taking advantage of features such as the ones we have discussed, you can establish a strong culture of learning which will help improve employee satisfaction, retain that vital talent, and build your employer brand as one that supports the development of your employees and provides them many opportunities to develop their career within your organisation.

You can request a demo of Digits LMS to get a better understanding of the potential behind our award-winning LMS/LXP hybrid functionality. You can also download our brochure to delve into the details of our solutions and services.