June 28, 2023
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Resilience, interconnection, and the ability to process information quickly have always been important; however, everything pales in comparison to how they are in need today. We all remember the COVID-19 pandemic and how it disrupted everything in the working landscape. We also see that employees aren’t quick to return to the office: as we’ll see, almost half of them actually love to work online. We can push them and try to rely on standard methods of motivation, learning, and connecting people with endless team building and bureaucratic procedures. However, there’s another approach.
All we need is to control and organise the information flowing in your company while maintaining the motivation of your workforce.
A corporate learning platform is a tool to connect and unite all your team members, so they’ll exchange information freely. An example of such a service is CleverLMS: it is designed to be a customisable set of elements used to connect people in the company, store corporate information, and create interactive online courses. It also can be adjusted exactly for your company.
Let’s start!
Shortly, this is a tool that sharpens your company’s value-producing facilities and burns the motivation flame in your employees while creating a working atmosphere of satisfaction and constant improvement. It’s what you need if you don’t want to waste your time making employees work with force especially if your company is based on remote work at least partially. Such platforms are called learning management systems (LMSs) and can be installed on your corporate servers or provided as cloud-based solutions.
Basically, six essential categories of features are must-haves for any learning management system you can encounter. If you cannot find at least one of these features in the tool you’re interested in, make sure to ask their support team why it’s missing!
🎓 Course creation instruments that enable you to proceed with materials in various formats, merging them into an online course.
💡 Workflow optimisation with the ability to organise learners in groups based on their skills.
🗄️ Data storing facilities to use and exchange content.
📋 Project management to schedule tasks and events and notify learners.
💬 Communication to discuss learning paths, tasks, and corporate news.
📈 Reporting to track performance metrics, such as the average task completion time of an employee, enabling you to make well-grounded decisions.
There are many other features, which are usually the branded distinctive features of each LMS you’ll find. And lastly, don’t forget about the price! The difference may be large, depending on how the LMS company positions its service.
From the dawn of history, any organisation creating goods relies on a skillful workforce. Each of them, be it an ancient construction society with its ranks or the modern construction company, relies on a specific set of learning materials and approaches to learn. Ancient ”companies” had systems for apprenticeship, when passionate newbies entered the company and trained to perform their workflows, producing the best-quality goods and services.
Today, such systems become much more complex, as the modern world with an Internet connection and new services launching all the time requires quick reactions and heavy optimisation. With such interconnectedness, challenges become complex as well: remember the COVID-19 pandemic and its worldwide lockdowns. 12% of all employees work from home in the U.S. now, and almost 30% additionally work on a hybrid model, according to Forbes. These numbers rise each month, even though the pandemic is over.
Choosing a good learning platform is what ensures that you’ll enable your employee to work fully or partially remotely while their efficiency remains stable and their satisfaction will even rise.
How to do that?
🔎 Analyse every process in your organisation. For that, write out the full map of your company, from the entry point, when you take some products or materials, to the point of value creation. You’ll see where you need to increase your employees’ skills and where there are “bottlenecks” in these processes that limit productivity.
🧱 Design a scheme of the desired corporate e-learning platform. Draw it above the company’s workflow map, ensuring that you employ all six basic features of the LMS. You’ll see how the centralised knowledge base, online courses, and enhanced communication will improve the situation with skills and bottlenecks, and how you need to implement them.
Here you are, with a clear plan of how to enrich your company with virtual learning halls and libraries. So, what’s next?
It’s crucial to complete several milestones after you choose your best corporate e-learning platform so you’ll obtain the maximum benefit.
📋 Connect learning paths with your workflows. Use the map from the previous paragraph to understand how learning tasks can be integrated into actual work activities.
🗨️ Initiate discussions about the important elements of your workflows, so your employees will communicate productively and enrich your company and themselves.
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🪪 Personalise all employees’ experiences: create courses and choose materials based on their
Before our company can enjoy all the benefits of the automatised platform, we need to install it. Here, we’ll see how. You can also explore the experience of CleverLMS customers to see how they used the platform.
At first, there are two installation mods: on your own corporate server or using the company-provided cloud-based space.
💽 Server-based LMS requires you to upload the LMS software into your corporate computing facilities and make sure that it runs as needed. You need to spend additional time installing it manually, so you’ll require extensive guidelines from your vendor’s support team.
☁️ Cloud-based LMS is a much easier option, as the vendor provides you with the client side of the application, such as mobile and web applications. So, your corporate online learning platform will work on the provider’s decentralised servers.
Generally, server-based solutions are cheaper and provide you with much more control, but require more effort and are usually less resilient. In both cases, you need to integrate your platforms with all the software you use. For that, use the platform’s API or widgets that can be inserted into other programs, from Google Docs or Slack to more advanced ones.
There is only general information, as exact guidelines will be very different for various platforms. Contact their service and support centres for more information.
Finally, why does all this make sense? Let’s see some examples.
🎯Use microlearning elements on a platform for corporate learning, teaching employees exactly what they need at the moment. Create learning materials targeting the weak sides of your employees, enhancing their motivation and problem-solving abilities.
📲 Use mobile learning so employees will learn everywhere, including right during work.
📈 Use statistics and reports to make decisions regarding each employee’s productivity.
👁️🗨️ Contact each employee personally when needed.
💸 Save costs on teachers, learning spaces, and personal meetings.
As you see, online corporate learning platforms are robust instruments to ensure that your workforce will always be motivated and efficient, while remaining humane and understanding each employee personally. As you have a toolset to work with information and connect people, your company becomes resilient to all challenges of the future years, while being able to use its benefits efficiently.
Isn’t it exactly what you need today?
Author: Elijah Obi
A corporate e-learning platform, also known as a Learning Management System (LMS), is a digital tool used to organise and manage your company’s training materials. It helps connect your team, store corporate information, and create online courses to improve employee skills and motivation, especially in remote or hybrid work environments.
A good LMS should include six essential features: instruments for creating courses, tools to organise learners and workflows, facilities for storing data, project management functions for scheduling, communication channels, and reporting tools to track performance metrics.
Start by analysing your company’s internal processes to find areas where skills need improvement. After identifying these 'bottlenecks', you can design a blueprint of how an LMS would fit into your workflows. This preparation ensures you choose a platform that meets your specific needs. For tailored advice, you could consult with a business coach from a firm like Robin Waite Limited.
A server-based LMS is installed on your company's own servers. This gives you more control but requires more technical work to set up and maintain. A cloud-based LMS is hosted by the provider, making it much easier to get started, as they handle the technical side for you.
Using a corporate learning platform allows you to save money on traditional training, provide targeted microlearning to address specific needs, and use performance data to make better decisions. It also supports mobile learning, letting your employees learn from anywhere, which boosts efficiency and motivation.
