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You’ve got an LMS – but what comes after you have implemented and launched your new platform?
After a flurry of activity, careful planning, and – let’s just be honest – probably some stress, you might be looking at your shiny, new LMS thinking: “Now what?”
If you’re a regular reader of the Thrive blog (thank you!), you may already have read our recent blogs How to guarantee a smooth LMS implementation and How to build your first LMS. Both are pivotal steps in the process, and this blog deals with what comes after them.
An LMS is, in our (admittedly biased) opinion, a non-negotiable part of your L&D strategy. But it is just that: One part of a larger strategy. So, let’s zoom out to look at the bigger picture.
Step one is to align your LMS’ functionality with organisational goals.
The most important question to ask yourself after you’ve implemented your LMS is: “What are our goals – not just as an L&D function, but as a wider organisation?”
Every piece of your L&D strategy should be linked to and aligned with organisational goals, and your LMS is no exception. Now of course, part of this will have started already (during the implementation stages), but it should continue thereafter. If it hasn’t already begun, here are some points to get you started:
1. Talk to your organisation’s leaders. Make sure you have a good idea of your organisation’s objectives and goals. Whatever these are – be they about innovation, revenue, or productivity – you can use them as a jumping-off point for how to use your LMS.
2. Where are you lacking? Once you have an idea of your organisation’s goals, you can explore where it is currently meeting them and where it’s falling short. Your LMS plays a huge part in this step, because skills and goals functionality can highlight these gaps for you before suggesting learning pathways that will fill them.
3. Fill those gaps. Fairly obviously, the next stage is filling in the skills gaps you find. Through the creation of highly personalised, customised learning pathways, you can target specific areas and upskill your employees in a strategic way that yields the results you’re looking for.
It’s impossible to talk about “the bigger picture” without acknowledging integration as an important part of that picture. As a learning platform provider with hundreds of integrations, we’re well aware of how crucial it is to seamlessly integrate your LMS with your tech stack.
If you already have some digital learning tools in your stack such as LinkedIn Learning and Udemy that your people enjoy using, there’s no reason to get rid of them for the sake of a new learning platform; just find one that facilitates them.
In doing this, you’re removing some of the potential barriers to learning caused by switching platforms and learning a new system – although of course, if you get a learning platform that’s extremely easy to use (like Thrive!) there shouldn’t be too many barriers in place anyway.
Integration comes in the early stages of implementing your learning platform, but it’s also the key to its continued success. It might surprise you to learn that in terms of employee engagement, 40% of employees actually prefer “fixes to difficult processes” before learning initiatives.
This tells us something – and in our opinion, the takeaway from this isn’t that employees don’t want to learn, but rather that they can’t focus on learning if they are facing difficulties with their everyday tasks. This is where integration comes in extremely handy.
L&D teams are always chasing that elusive “continued learning culture”, and your LMS is the ideal tool to help you achieve just that. How exactly? Let us count the ways:
1. Knowledge platform. The single most useful application of an LMS, when it comes to continued learning, is its use as a knowledge platform. This is your company’s one, central memory – the place where all your essential learning and resources are stored. The easier it is for your people to access this knowledge, the more naturally a continued learning culture falls into place.
2. Flexibility. This also feeds into the “effortless” element we mentioned above. Removing as many barriers as possible to learning means that people are more likely to do it on a continuous basis.
Flexibility can look a lot of different ways – maybe your LMS comes with a sleek, user-friendly mobile app so that employees can access learning even when they’re not at their desk. Or perhaps it’s as simple as content variety, catering to a diverse range of learning needs by uploading content in a diverse range of formats (whether that’s video, podcast audio, PDF’s or quizzes.) Multimodal learning has also been proven to improve learning outcomes like retention, so it’s a win-win.
3. Social learning. This is another integral part of embedding a continued learning culture, and making it feel like second-nature. Social learning could look like User-Generated Content, empowering your employees to upload their own knowledge to your platform. Or maybe you just want your employees to feel like they’re using a social media platform by allowing them to like, share and comment on the pieces of content that mean the most to them.
These are all brilliant elements to embed into your LMS – but this sense of continued learning also goes the other way. Just as your LMS can facilitate continued learning for your people, your people can facilitate continued learning for your L&D function. What about your LMS or its content needs to change? What’s working and what isn’t? Your employees are the ones using it every day, so make sure you’re always open to their feedback in order to learn and continually improve.
This will make sure that your LMS is as effective as possible – and most importantly, ensure that it’s a tool your teams actually want to use.
What do you think? What are the essential next steps once you have embedded an LMS into your organisation? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so join the conversation over on LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for an LMS that your teams will actually want to use, book a Thrive demo today.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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You’ve got an LMS – but what comes after you have implemented and launched your new platform?
After a flurry of activity, careful planning, and – let’s just be honest – probably some stress, you might be looking at your shiny, new LMS thinking: “Now what?”
If you’re a regular reader of the Thrive blog (thank you!), you may already have read our recent blogs How to guarantee a smooth LMS implementation and How to build your first LMS. Both are pivotal steps in the process, and this blog deals with what comes after them.
An LMS is, in our (admittedly biased) opinion, a non-negotiable part of your L&D strategy. But it is just that: One part of a larger strategy. So, let’s zoom out to look at the bigger picture.
Step one is to align your LMS’ functionality with organisational goals.
The most important question to ask yourself after you’ve implemented your LMS is: “What are our goals – not just as an L&D function, but as a wider organisation?”
Every piece of your L&D strategy should be linked to and aligned with organisational goals, and your LMS is no exception. Now of course, part of this will have started already (during the implementation stages), but it should continue thereafter. If it hasn’t already begun, here are some points to get you started:
1. Talk to your organisation’s leaders. Make sure you have a good idea of your organisation’s objectives and goals. Whatever these are – be they about innovation, revenue, or productivity – you can use them as a jumping-off point for how to use your LMS.
2. Where are you lacking? Once you have an idea of your organisation’s goals, you can explore where it is currently meeting them and where it’s falling short. Your LMS plays a huge part in this step, because skills and goals functionality can highlight these gaps for you before suggesting learning pathways that will fill them.
3. Fill those gaps. Fairly obviously, the next stage is filling in the skills gaps you find. Through the creation of highly personalised, customised learning pathways, you can target specific areas and upskill your employees in a strategic way that yields the results you’re looking for.
It’s impossible to talk about “the bigger picture” without acknowledging integration as an important part of that picture. As a learning platform provider with hundreds of integrations, we’re well aware of how crucial it is to seamlessly integrate your LMS with your tech stack.
If you already have some digital learning tools in your stack such as LinkedIn Learning and Udemy that your people enjoy using, there’s no reason to get rid of them for the sake of a new learning platform; just find one that facilitates them.
In doing this, you’re removing some of the potential barriers to learning caused by switching platforms and learning a new system – although of course, if you get a learning platform that’s extremely easy to use (like Thrive!) there shouldn’t be too many barriers in place anyway.
Integration comes in the early stages of implementing your learning platform, but it’s also the key to its continued success. It might surprise you to learn that in terms of employee engagement, 40% of employees actually prefer “fixes to difficult processes” before learning initiatives.
This tells us something – and in our opinion, the takeaway from this isn’t that employees don’t want to learn, but rather that they can’t focus on learning if they are facing difficulties with their everyday tasks. This is where integration comes in extremely handy.
L&D teams are always chasing that elusive “continued learning culture”, and your LMS is the ideal tool to help you achieve just that. How exactly? Let us count the ways:
1. Knowledge platform. The single most useful application of an LMS, when it comes to continued learning, is its use as a knowledge platform. This is your company’s one, central memory – the place where all your essential learning and resources are stored. The easier it is for your people to access this knowledge, the more naturally a continued learning culture falls into place.
2. Flexibility. This also feeds into the “effortless” element we mentioned above. Removing as many barriers as possible to learning means that people are more likely to do it on a continuous basis.
Flexibility can look a lot of different ways – maybe your LMS comes with a sleek, user-friendly mobile app so that employees can access learning even when they’re not at their desk. Or perhaps it’s as simple as content variety, catering to a diverse range of learning needs by uploading content in a diverse range of formats (whether that’s video, podcast audio, PDF’s or quizzes.) Multimodal learning has also been proven to improve learning outcomes like retention, so it’s a win-win.
3. Social learning. This is another integral part of embedding a continued learning culture, and making it feel like second-nature. Social learning could look like User-Generated Content, empowering your employees to upload their own knowledge to your platform. Or maybe you just want your employees to feel like they’re using a social media platform by allowing them to like, share and comment on the pieces of content that mean the most to them.
These are all brilliant elements to embed into your LMS – but this sense of continued learning also goes the other way. Just as your LMS can facilitate continued learning for your people, your people can facilitate continued learning for your L&D function. What about your LMS or its content needs to change? What’s working and what isn’t? Your employees are the ones using it every day, so make sure you’re always open to their feedback in order to learn and continually improve.
This will make sure that your LMS is as effective as possible – and most importantly, ensure that it’s a tool your teams actually want to use.
What do you think? What are the essential next steps once you have embedded an LMS into your organisation? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so join the conversation over on LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for an LMS that your teams will actually want to use, book a Thrive demo today.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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