What’s the single most important factor in your business’s success? You could answer with almost anything – a unique product or service, for instance, the right positioning, or perhaps a dedication to innovation. All of those things matter, but the truth is that the foundation for all of your success rests on your in-house talent.

Simply put, without the right people in the right places, you’ll find success much more difficult to achieve. That makes talent management one of the principal concerns for business owners and decision-makers. It’s not just an HR-related task. It’s a mission-critical consideration. The right LMS can simplify things for you.

Understanding the Role of an LMS in Talent Management

How Does an LMS Play into Talent Management?

The right learning management system can provide some pretty dramatic talent management and development capabilities. Let’s explore some of the most important.

Training

For employees to be effective within your organization, they must understand their roles. This is what learning management systems were designed to do. They give you the chance to educate and train employees in what they are supposed to do, how they are expected to accomplish those goals, how to use the tools available to them, and more.

Educating Employees

While an LMS is a go-to tool for job training and compliance training, it can and should also be used to educate them about your organization, explore your values and mission, and so much more. Talent retention is a vital consideration with your teams, and educating your employees about the organization, its mission, and goals, and your guiding principles, can help them buy into your business and commit to a future with you.

Beyond Training

An LMS is a great solution for training. It provides the ability to train people at all levels, across the entire organization, simultaneously. From compliance-based training to professional development, learning management systems offer flexibility and more. However, think beyond training and professional development.

Think about things like benefits management. How much time does your HR staff spend explaining benefits and helping your employees manage them? With an LMS, you can provide training and explanations to some of the more common questions your employees have, alleviating some of the frustration and confusion, and providing more value to them.

Easier Onboarding

Onboarding is a critical element of talent management. However, it can be incredibly time-consuming for your staff and frustrating for new hires. An LMS allows you to provide new hires with an in-depth introduction to their duties, the organization as a whole, their potential career opportunities, and more.

Clearer Career Paths

To develop, maintain, and then retain talent, you need employees to follow career paths with your business. Unfortunately, most employees are pretty dissatisfied with their career opportunities. There are several reasons for this, including:

  • Scope Lack: A significant number of employees leave their job because there is a lack of scope for development. In short, they might know where they want to go within the organization, but they lack the tools to gain the necessary training. They cannot develop themselves to the point that they’re a good fit for the position.
  • No Opportunities: Even more people leave their places of employment because they believe that there are no future career opportunities with that organization. That makes sense. After all, if you’ve gone as far as you can go, but you’re unhappy with where that is, the only choice left is to leave.

The right LMS can address both of these problems. Addressing the lack of scope for development is relatively obvious. It simply means that you, the employer, need to invest in modules designed to help your teams grow and evolve. You need to provide the tools they need to develop themselves into something better.

However, an LMS can also help with the seeming lack of opportunities. Often, the lack of communication is the primary reason that employees feel there is no path forward to a better position. They cannot find information about available career paths, what steps they need to take to reach a better position, and the like. An LMS can provide the guidance necessary.

Recruitment

We’ve touched on the LMS’s role in onboarding, but it can also be used during the initial recruitment period. A modern LMS provides each user with a personalized dashboard. From this point, they can access things like training modules, leaderboards, and more. However, you could also add in a “now hiring” section.

Listing new roles available within your business provides existing employees with the opportunity to apply for those positions before you make them public. That plays into talent retention, educating your staff about available opportunities, and showing your commitment to promoting from within first, which speaks directly to employee loyalty.

Modern Performance Management

In the past, learning management and performance management were separate things. Today, the line between the two is blurring. Learning doesn’t happen just one time per year, and neither should performance management coaching. If you haven’t already, now is the time to ditch the annual review process.

Instead, you can adopt an ongoing check-in-style review process. Your LMS can play a central role here, providing you (and your employees) with review tools, communication capabilities, and more. It also makes it easier to ensure that you have the right people in the right positions and to make changes when necessary.

In Conclusion

While talent management and learning management might not seem related, the fact is that they are two sides of the same coin. A modern learning management system can provide you with the tools, features, and capabilities necessary to provide essential professional development and compliance-related training to your employees, while also managing your business’s talent effectively.