
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations began to provide remote working options to their employees. This was necessary to ensure social distancing and prevent the further spread of coronavirus. However, when employees began working remotely, the organization was stuck on how to maintain employees’ productivity and provide the best training and learning support to them. After all, working from home isn’t easy. It has its own challenges and problems. Some of the major issues that organizations are still battling are:
- The isolation felt by employees.
- Frequent burnout due to continuous online meetings
- Declining employee productivity
- Inability to construct a working environment at home
- Health-related issues
- Mental stress, and so on.
Many organizations which followed traditional on-the-job training are now forced to switch to online training. This is facilitated by a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is a web-based platform that helps in planning, implementing, and tracking online training and learning activities. Online learning is one of the most important features of an LMS that makes remote learning a possible reality.
LMS compliments WFH culture in the following ways:
1. Stay connected
In traditional on-the-job training, employees develop a sense of connection through face-to-face interaction. Meeting during coffee and lunch breaks, office parties, and while commuting brought the employees together. It gave them a sense of belongingness.
To ensure such a connection remains undisrupted even during WFH, an LMS allows organizations to organize virtual meetings using Google meet, Zoom, MS Meet, etc. The employees thus stay connected by continuous communication and face-to-face interaction through such online platforms.
2. Readymade eLearning content
An LMS provides readymade eLearning content to employees and online learners. An online training library acts as a centralized repository of information that, though created by online instructors, can be accessed by all at any time and anywhere.
The eLearning content is a mix of documents, videos, animations, and other multimedia. By incorporating such a diversity of content, the online learners and employees tend to be more engaged.
3. Social learning
Seeing the way social networking sites (LinkedIn, Quora, Facebook, etc.) have amassed popularity, organizations, or you may say the corporate world, have started integrating social networking tools at the workplace. This is to ensure that they keep pace with the advancing technology and that the employees don’t feel left behind.
An LMS has collaboration tools that promote social learning:
- Forums
- Web conferencing
- Shared calendars
- Online communities
- Customized schedules and alerts
- One on one Q&A with experts
- Private chats
These tools unite the dispersed workforce and ensure that the employees and online learners learn from each other via their experiences.
4. Anytime and anywhere work
Gone are those days when one had to wake up early in the morning, get all decked up for the office, get stuck in heavy traffic, and then fear reaching late for work or training. If you miss one training session, then there is no means to get that lecture repeated.
However, with an LMS, one can be trained anywhere, anytime. This means a person residing in Kolkata can be trained by a company located in Mumbai. There is no need to relocate and pay heavy rents for apartments.
Online learners and employees can access the online training 24/7. All the eLearning material is stored in the cloud, which can be accessed easily with just one click. All you need to do is to login into your account on the portal.
Also, the online meeting can be conducted easily, bringing all under the same roof with the help of an internet connection and an LMS.
5. Automated notifications and alerts
With an LMS, there is no need for employees to maintain diaries and write down their schedules.
An LMS automatically generates notifications regarding upcoming eLearning courses, the addition of new eLearning material in the online training library, and scheduled online meetings and web conferences.
It also automatically alerts employees and online learners about their pending eLearning courses to make sure they complete their online courses on time.
By enabling such announcements, an LMS promotes multitasking and keeps the organization updated and informed.
6. Cost-effective
An LMS saves a lot of money for an organization. It does away with major expenses like- maintenance costs, electricity and water bills, instructor fees, paying rents for the venue, spending on paper and printers, etc.
The money saved can, however, be used in strengthening and improving the LMS for making online training more fun!
7. Soft skills training
This is useful, especially for sales training. An LMS is a trustworthy sales enablement tool. It can help the sales personnel develop soft skills, like- communication skills, convincing ability, time management, problem-solving, and creativity. Such skills can be built using branching scenarios.
8. Easy tracking
With an LMS, employees can be monitored and tracked effectively in real-time. The online instructors and eLearning project managers can get a bird’s-eye view of all the activities of employees and online learners. For example, how many times the lecture videos have been accessed, the attendance count of employees and online learners, and watching hours can also be calculated. This helps the organization to see the eLearning progress. If they see their eLearning strategy failing, they can rectify it immediately.
9. Gamify work experience
Gamification features give rise to intrinsic motivation (to do the training properly) through extrinsic motivation tools (like- game rewards). An LMS treats the completion of online training courses and modules as achieving milestones. The online learners and employees are showered with rewards that include- trophies, badges, virtual coins, and so on.
This ensures that they experience competitive vibes similar to that in the workplace. It also addresses retention and engagement-related issues.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of fast communication and developing an agile work environment. An LMS helps in achieving this by ensuring that, no matter what, learning should never stop. It helps manage your business from anywhere and brings the entire organization under one roof despite being physically apart. Be it employee onboarding, product training, delivering the best eLearning content, or creating an engaging online training course, an LMS quick fixes all work from home challenges.