When most people think of HR, they think of onboarding new employees, rule books, and lots and lots of admin tasks.
All those things are part of managing human resources for sure, but that’s not the whole story.
Today’s HR managers have a lot more on their plate. Upskilling and reskilling, continuous development programs, managing employee engagement, and measuring employee performance.
Just part of what competent (and busy!) HR departments deal with every day.
It can get a bit overwhelming. That’s why so many HR professionals have come to rely on learning management systems (LMS) to save time, automate menial tasks, and get actionable insights into how employees are performing.
If you’re wondering how an LMS system can help HR teams do their jobs better, this guide is for you.
We’ll go over some benefits that LMSs offer HR departments and look into a case study showing how the integration between HR and an LMS works in practice.
So, let’s get cracking!
Why do HR departments need an LMS?
The role of modern HR departments is multi-faceted, going way beyond traditional admin tasks. HR professionals deal with hiring and onboarding new hires, providing training, and performance management.
An LMS platform can support all these activities in a way that’s scalable, efficient, and cost-effective.
Using an LMS as part of your HR system can standardize training, ensuring all employees get the same information and learning materials.
This is especially useful for compliance training, for instance, where all team members must follow the same procedures for proper certification.
Moreover, as your organization grows, an LMS allows you to scale your online training efforts and deliver learning experiences to more learners without requiring additional staffing or resources.
Compared to in-person training, using LMSs is more cost-effective since there’s no need to pay hefty instructor fees and travel costs for large workshops or classes.
Another way in which an LMS reduces costs and labor is automation. Many of the top LMS platforms allow HR and training admins to streamline repetitive menial tasks such as user registration, course enrollment, scheduling, and tracking.
Speaking of tracking, HR departments can use assessments in LMSs to provide insight into employee performance and connect the investment in training initiatives with real-world results.
Using an LMS also helps HR professionals answer the needs of a modern workforce. According to various studies, 92% of employees say having access to professional development training content is important.
Employees who enjoy such access are 15% more engaged at work, while companies that provide training programs enjoy a 34% increase in employee retention.
Engagement and retention are, of course, big issues for any HR department.
So, we can see that using an LMS is a logical solution to many of the challenges HR professionals face – from increasing engagement, retention, and satisfaction to measuring and tracking performance.
In the next section, we’ll delve deeper into the specific benefits that LMSs offer to HR professionals and departments.
5 ways an LMS can benefit human resources
In general, mixing e-learning platforms, such as an LMS, with HR functions leads to more efficiency in learning, training, and measuring performance.
Here are five ways an LMS benefits human resources.
Now, we’ll take a closer look at each.
#1: Smoother employee onboarding process
Onboarding is a critical part of an employee’s journey. It’s also a time fraught with mixed emotions – excitement for a new role on the one hand and anxiety on the other.
Investing in a good employee onboarding program welcomes new hires and equips them with the info and resources to hit the ground running.
And that’s where an LMS comes in.
With an LMS, you can use e-learning technology to onboard remote employees. Plus, you can take advantage of features like gamification to make things more fun and engaging.
In addition, HR teams can create custom learning pathways to give employees a clear roadmap of what competencies they need to advance in their careers. These paths can start from onboarding and progress to targeted skills training.
The result? Using an LMS for onboarding provides a user-friendly experience that empowers employees to excel in their roles and keep learning as they go forward.
#2: Increased productivity with employee training at scale
Continuous employee learning is the key to productivity. Employees today, especially millennials and gen z, consider learning opportunities an important part of their jobs.
Then, of course, come upskilling and reskilling, both crucial for staying competitive in a rapidly changing business environment.
When you provide employee development opportunities, employees are less likely to leave, thus reducing your churn rate. A sobering stat from Gallup reveals that employee turnover costs US businesses $1 trillion every year.
Providing high-quality employee training is vital to enable continuous learning and give employees everything they need to grow professionally.
So, the solution is clear, but doing all this at scale is what can trip you up. Without learning management software, it’s practically impossible to deliver good training to a large number of learners.
An LMS not only delivers the training but provides actionable metrics that you can use for employee performance evaluations and gauging the impact of training on productivity.
#3: Elevates the compliance training process
Compliance training is one of those necessary evils we all have to bear.
But there’s no reason to stick to outdated and boring ways to do it. With an LMS, you can use gamification, quizzes, and micro-learning to provide engaging training sessions that also aid knowledge retention.
Of course, effective compliance training is not all fun and games. You need to be sure that your employees have finished the training, understood the material, and received the necessary certifications.
An LMS tracks all that and even lets you automate training management tasks.
Docebo’s Audit Trail function, for instance, records activities that affect specific operations, procedures, and events so you can keep your e-learning courses updated with ease.
You can also set up automatic reminders to notify employees when it’s time to retake mandatory compliance courses.
#4: Automates trainee feedback
One of the best ways to see if your learning and development efforts are meeting the employees’ training needs is to simply ask them.
You could do this in person or with a pen and paper, but the most effective way is to use LMS surveys. Any modern LMS comes with the option to include a survey at the end of a course.
In these surveys, employees can give feedback on the learning modules, the content, the process, and the trainers and administrators.
Making the surveys anonymous is a great way to ensure employees will speak their minds honestly.
Another benefit LMSs offer is built-in feedback analysis. Based on survey results, the system can identify problem areas and give your staff insight into what needs improvement.
#5: Makes data management easier
It’s no secret that HR departments produce and handle a large amount of data. A part of that data comes from employee training with things like course completion rates, assessment results, certification status, etc.
Even if you’re an Excel rockstar (and truth be told, few people are), keeping track of it all manually is time-consuming and ineffective.
LMS platforms hold all this data in the cloud, collate and analyze it automatically (with nice dashboards to boot!). Most importantly, they allow for easy integration into HRIS platforms and other HR software.
At this point, you might be wondering how all these benefits play out in real-world business scenarios. We have a case study up next that’ll show you just that.
An LMS and HR integration case study
Integrating an LMS into the HR function of an organization offers significant benefits.
This is what the Canadian cinema and family entertainment center company Cineplex discovered when they integrated Docebo with their Human Resources Information System (HRIS).
The goal:
Cineplex wanted to find a way to support employee career progression and increase the retention rate of top talent.
To do that, they integrated the Docebo LMS with their HRIS so that every new hire was automatically added to Docebo.
The challenge:
Cineplex employs a lot of young people in customer-facing roles, and turnover can be a real challenge for this demographic.
“We want to ensure that employees are able to visualize their career path with the company,” explained Allison Dell, Cineplex director of learning & development.
The solution:
Cineplex now uses Docebo to power their Cineplex Academy, which serves more than 13,000 employees across Canada. The Academy features more than 300 courses and 140 learning plans.
Training content in the Academy also leverages microlearning and mobile learning, to even better serve the company’s young demographic.
Some training is compliance-based, but many of the learning materials are geared toward professional growth.
The results:
With this system, Cineplex can identify potential young leaders from its workforce and deliver scenario-based training to support their professional development.
The metrics don’t lie – Cineplex has seen a 95% retention rate of promoted top talent.
If you’re interested in more details, a full case study is available.
Now Over to You
The plate of an HR professional is seldom empty. HR departments juggle many different responsibilities and duties.
Doing all that effectively, efficiently, and at scale can be a real challenge.
One way to make the burden lighter is to take advantage of the benefits an LMS offers.
With integrations into HRIS platforms, data management and tracking, and the ability to serve training content to a large audience, LMSs can help HR professionals excel.
Docebo can supercharge your HR department and transform how you approach employee training, evaluation, and professional development.
To talk to our experts, simply schedule a demo!