Learning Management Automation: Understanding the Advantages

Ongoing training is a vital consideration for pretty much every business and organization. Whether we’re talking about continuing education to maintain professional credentials, employee development, or training mandated by HR, every organization will have at least some need in this area. However, not all learning management systems offer the same benefits.

If you’re still using an outdated, manual tracking and completion system, you’re cheating yourself and your business. Learning management automation through an LMS delivers some pretty important advantages that you should understand. What is learning management automation, though? How does it work? Why should you consider it? We’ll explore the answers to those questions and more.

Tracking and Monitoring

One of the most challenging tasks with an old-style learning system is tracking employee completion and compliance. Where does each employee stand with their training? How well did they perform? Did they really master the information or did they pass by the proverbial skin of their teeth?

With learning management automation, you’re able to access all of this information and a great deal more from a central location. Employee completion information, scores, pass rate, and other details are automatically stored in their file, allowing direct access and even visualization through graphs, charts, and other methods. This makes it simpler than ever for managers, HR professionals, and others within your business to ensure compliance with industry and government requirements, and to make sure that your employees are actually developing the skills they need to grow and thrive.

Never Miss Retraining

Many different industries require retraining or ongoing training. It might be to stay compliant with regulations, or it could be to ensure an employee’s knowledge is up to date. However, it can be quite an arduous process to track retraining needs in a manual system.

With learning management automation, though, the system automatically records when the last training occurred and notifies about the need for retraining. Depending on the system, retraining can then be scheduled with the click of a mouse button and the employee can even be alerted to their training through an automated alert/notification.

Real-Time Reporting

With traditional training and learning systems, you must wait until well after completion to learn how an employee performed. However, with an LMS that offers automation, you can benefit from real-time auditing. You can accurately track a learner’s progress and delve into in-depth reporting in real-time. That makes it simple to catch problems before they occur, ensure that employees are scoring more than the minimum necessary, and even track the amount of time spent per module.

Reduced Time and Costs

How much time does your organization lose tracking and monitoring learning progress? How much money do those hours cost you? What might that time and money be better used for? With learning management automation, you’re able to reduce both the time and cost required to monitor track, record, audit and other associated tasks on management’s end. Those resources can then be allocated to activities that help your business grow and thrive.

Finding the Right Learning Management System

It’s important to understand that learning management automation is only available through the right platform. You’ll need to choose an LMS, or learning management system. These eLearning solutions offer an all-in-one approach to learning, learning management, auditing and reporting, compliance tracking, and more.

However, there are many different learning management systems on the market, and they are not created equal. Making an informed decision here is vital. In addition to the automation benefits we’ve already covered, make sure that your LMS stacks up by offering the following capabilities and advantages:

• Integrates Social Learning: Social learning is becoming increasingly important and provides several benefits to learners. By connecting with social platforms like Facebook, your LMS offers access to feedback and online forums that build a better overall experience. You can even create learning experiences that focus on peer collaboration to train multiple employees at the same time, build teamwork, or unify departments.
• Compliance Regulations: Make sure that the LMS you choose makes it simple to stay up to date with compliance regulations if they pertain to your business or organization. Compliance laws change regularly and your LMS will need to update promptly to reflect those changes. Before investing in an eLearning platform, find out who is responsible for updating the system when compliance requirements change. Is it your organization? Is it the LMS developer? If it’s the developer, do they offer any kind of guarantee on timely updates?
• Expansion: Your training needs will change over time. It might be adding new roles and responsibilities. It could be new business processes that must be covered. Whatever the case, make sure that the LMS you choose can be easily expanded. You should be able to log into the system, make the changes necessary, add whatever content you require, and then save the changes and make them available to your learners with little difficulty. If you have to jump through hoops to expand your eLearning management system, it might be worth the time needed to find an alternative.
• Learn from Anywhere, Anytime: Most eLearning platforms offer the ability to complete courses from anywhere, whenever it works best for your learners, but that’s not true for all of them. Today more than ever before, your employees expect the flexibility to complete courses and learning modules not just from their office PCs, but from their mobile devices and even from home. Make sure that the LMS you choose offers this capability.

In Conclusion

As you can see, learning management automation offers some pretty significant benefits for your organization, but also for your employees and team members. From streamlining the learning process to ensuring that you’re always up to date with compliance regulations and even allowing anytime/anywhere learning capabilities, the right LMS is an invaluable asset for your business. However, you do need to ensure that the LMS you choose fits your needs both now and down the road.