Introduction:
With the evolving business environment we are in today, the development of employees is more important than ever before. Organizations are seeing the importance of investing in employees learning and development to help foster a more engaged and skilled workforce which in return impacts the bottom line. There have been various studies done by LinkedIn, Forbes, and other organizations that reveal, 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if the company invested in their career development. These stats show how important learning and development is not only to the growth of an organization but what todayтАЩs talent is expecting from its employers.
We have created this blog to help organizations explore how Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) support employee development from onboarding, upskilling, to providing a comprehensive framework for growth.
Understanding LXP and LMS
Definition of LMS
A Learning Management System, also known as an LMS, is a software application that helps organizations centralize, administer, document, track, report, and deliver all of their employee training. Traditionally, LMS platforms have been used to manage and deliver e-learning courses but over-time with the advancement of LMS platforms, many systems today not only help you track your e-learning courses but also provides organizations the ability to track any live or in-person trainings, including external certifications received by employees from any external sources. LMS systems also provide pre-built content and provide the ability to create content within the software itself. All of these components have made LMSs an integral part of an organization’s training programs not only for compliance and onboarding purposes but also for skill development.
Definition of LXP
True to its name, a Learning Experience Platform (LXP), on the other hand, is more user-centric, providing a more personalized learning experience for each employee. The system tends to help organizations with training adoption and engagement by providing employees personalized recommendations based on their skills, previous courses they have taken, and recommending content to help with their professional development. LXP also tends to be a great solution when it comes to onboarding employees by providing new hires the opportunity to get a glimpse of the development opportunities provided within an organization and have more of a curated experience for the new hire based on their role and skill set.
Comparison
While LMS platforms usually are more administrative heavy and engagement is driven by administrators or managers within an organization assigning training, LXPs offer a more flexible, engaging, and personalized learning environment curated to the specific employees needs and skills to grow within their current role and advance onto new opportunities within an organization. When organizations choose to leverage both together, they can provide a more comprehensive learning ecosystem that supports all of their learning needs across compliance, onboarding, and continuous development.
The Role of LMS in Onboarding:
An LMS plays a pivotal role in an employee’s onboarding journey in an organization. New employees with good onboarding experiences are 18X more committed to their employers. Thorough onboarding programs also help organizations increase their retention rates by 82%.
Streamlined Onboarding Process
With training being a crucial aspect of a new hires onboarding experience, providing a centralized LMS platform that can deliver all of the training for role-specific, compliance, and skill development is essential for any business. This process not only allows you to centralize training but also gives your organization a mechanism to properly track employee training and where new hires may need additional development to be proficient in their day-to-day roles.
Standardized Training
On average onboarding can take anywhere between three to six months. During the onboarding process, new hires are going through company-specific policies, procedures, getting acclimated to the culture of the new business, and are getting trained on the daily activities that they are responsible for in their new role. Some HR professionals recommend that to provide more of a complete onboarding program businesses should extend onboarding to a year to provide better job satisfaction.
During the onboarding process, organizations can leverage an LMS to outline functional and non-functional skills that an employee needs. This experience allows employees to get a clear understanding of what is expected of them, the types of skills they need, and also demonstrates to a new hire that their organization is willing to invest in them and ensure they are successful in their new roles. LXP systems can also be leveraged for better personalization for new hires, the system automatically recommends training to the user based off of their current role and the growth pathway set within their organization for the specific departments they are in. Additionally, providing a mentor or buddying system during the onboarding process can positively impact retention and also improve the speed-to-productivity for new hires.
Tracking Progress
We often hear тАШwhat gets measured, gets done and what gets measured, gets improvedтАЩ. A significant advantage of an LMS is its ability to provide training departments, HR, and managers, a clear reporting and tracking system to see exactly where a new hire is with their training and what are areas of improvement.
Within an LMS, assessments or quizzes can be added to analyze knowledge retention and training comprehension. These assessments also allow managers to see what areas a team member may not be understanding and additional training may be required. It also can help content creators within an organization to analyze common questions that users may be missing to improve content quality.
As talent today are searching to join new organizations, training and development is a significant area that they are considering when joining an organization. By not only streamlining all of your onboarding processes but also providing all self-development training and coaching programs through your LMS allows your organizations to centralize all training and assess overall organizational talent health.
Enhancing Engagement with LXP
Personalization is key to enhancing engagement and a great learning experience for employees. Although an LMS sets the foundation for your training and development, LXPs on the other hand provide more personalization and an expanded breadth of formal and informal content. LXPs can also add additional value to your training programs by helping streamline communication on new training programs, automate manual tasks regarding user recommended training, and highlight employee accomplishments amongst many other aspects of your programs to help create a better learning culture.
When considering engagement, proving the right content is crucial. Surveys can be a great mechanism within your LXP to see what are additional topics that your users may be interested in to increase your system engagement. Some LMS systems also provide analytics around what topic areas that users are searching for within your catalog, along with topics that users may be mostly engaging with. This helps in seeing trends within your teams, analyzing what programs may help them, and identifying what users may be curious to learn more about.
Ensuring that you are promoting your training programs and tying it into onboarding and continuous development programs are key to success.
Recommendation Engine for Curated Training
Providing a personalized learning program can help with better learning outcomes, allowing employees to be more productive and motivated to complete their training as content is personalized to their role, skills, interest, and learning preferences. Working with new hires to get an understanding of their career goals and having programs outlined within your LMS while leveraging your LXP to automatically recommend courses, pathways, and different mentorship programs for employees can be beneficial to both employees and employers to create a better learning culture. By implementing a more personalized approach to learning, retention and engagement can increase upwards of 93%.
Mentorship and Coaching
Mentorship programs can also be effectively incorporated into learning and development and can provide ways for addressing issues with employees and broadening networks for skills upgrades. It increases employeeтАЩs avenues for seeking assistance from senior employees without necessarily burdening the mentor with all the responsibility of the growing worker. Likewise, peer-to-peer learning is beneficial as searching for a peer with similar objectives increases the exchange of feedback and content.
Such programs develop assignments and viewing guides by which users demonstrate the gained knowledge and skills with the help of a mentor. Customizing the available mentorship programs in your LMS and allowing the LXP to suggest them based on past training is effective.
Peer relationships are developed in a manner that everyone, in a given learning group, is inspired with similar objectives that allow for an exchange of feedback and contents.
Communication & Social Learning
A study done by Gallup in February 2024, had stated that 54% of the U.S. workforce is working hybrid, while 27% is exclusively remote and the remainder 20% is working on-site. With over half of the organizations working hybrid or a blend of on-site and remote, social learning and communication are a key aspect of any program to foster a sense of community and to encourage knowledge sharing. Many LMSs today have a social learning aspect that allows you to leverage forums to engage your users, allowing them to ask questions from SMEs. Communication modules within an LXP or an LMS can be beneficial to add announcements of new programs that are available to users to automatically be notified once launched, highlight learning accomplishments, and do any shoutouts and kudos to team members that are spending time in their learning and development. These can also be a great way to do quick shoutouts once new hires are completed with their onboarding programs and allowing their team members to congratulate them and build a more encouraging learning environment, allowing a new hire to feel a sense of belonging.
User-Generated Content
Today enabling every employee to generate and distribute content has become a requirement; it is all about gaining an edge over the competitors. The employees are given a platform on which to share their ideas, hence creation of a knowledge-sharing culture within organizations. This privilege not only makes the users in charge of the platform but also makes them to be owning much of the learning processes.
Learners are no longer just receivers of information but the ones who provide a variety of inputs and knowledge. The integration of social media also fosters the use of realistic knowledge sharing good examples, which consist of, tutorials, reference cases, and practice among others as compared to the conventional teaching and learning approaches. Thus, learners are able to find a wider set of information, learn from their own peers, and easily adjust to various issues in the course of their performance.
Thus, the democratization of LXPsтАЩ content creation is an opportunity to turn the training process into a discovery of the wisdom of the organization, where learning becomes a constant process of acquiring new knowledge and ideas.
Continuous Development and Upskilling
With technological advancement especially in Artificial Intelligence, it becomes necessary that the teams enhance their abilities. It does not only help organizations secure their position in the competitive environment but also allows them to adapt to new issues when they occur.
When an organization encourages learning, the organizationтАЩs workforce is best positioned to create solutions for the future. Constant training enables the workers to incite anticipation of the new methods and technology hence providing organizations with great assets.
However, it should be emphasized that the concept of тАШcontinuing educationтАЩ is not limited to the updating of knowledge because this process should include the identification of future requirements. The companies that invest in training unlock the potential of employees and enable them to achieve the organizationтАЩs goals and introduce changes at all levels.
One of the most critical ranges in this alternation is the incorporation of LMS and LXP. LMS solutions offer tutorials and courses with clear learning maps and certificates that can be useful for employment, which guarantees the acquisition of necessary competencies systematically. On the other hand LXPs add value to learning by customizing the content being offered in line with the individuals needs, skills and career aspirations thus increasing involvement and aeration of the content being proffered.
LMS and LXP as platforms together form a rather closed loop of learning that fosters constant growth. Thus, by investing their employees into those technologies, organizations not only build higher and more skilled personnel but also create the practice of continuous learning necessary for long-term effectiveness in todayтАЩs environment.
Blended Learning Approaches
Integrating an LMS with an LXP optimizes blended learning as it takes the best from one solution and complements it with features of the other. LMS is useful for organizational learning to deliver its compliance courses and certification leading to the achievement of organizational learning objectives concerning the learners. While an LMS is more structured and learners are mandated to complete their training, an LXP is relatively flexible with the learner able to access several other resources such as webinars, podcasts, and peers for learning in addition to specified courses. Thus, this integration helps accommodate all the learning styles and needs, permits structured coursework, and enables the employee to freely explore other materials.
Formats of learning include interacting, micro-learning, social learning, and experiences that enable the employees to improve skills and knowledge as per their learning styles. It not only motivates the employees and increases the overall attendance levels but also promotes fast career advancement and gives a comprehensive skill incorporating strategy, content knowledge, and teamwork.
Skill Gap Analysis & Skill Management
Skill Gap Analysis and Skill Management are critical business processes that are supported by the LMS and LXP. These platforms help organizations identify the areas of deficits in their employeesтАЩ competencies via testing and analysis. LMS and LXP can identify such gaps through surveys, feedback analysis, and tracking the progress as well as scores.
Once such, these platforms play an important role in offering to bridge the gaps as and when these are identified. This may include sponsored enrolment or individual learning journey maps, Choosing content bundles, and streamed or bite-sized training to reskill or upskill employees. Thus, by addressing these gaps in skills, organizations help develop the employeesтАЩ competencies and strengthen overall workforce preparedness to respond to current pressure. Hence, LMS and LXP integration in the management of skills demonstrated the benefits of organizational flexibility and competitiveness in the current complex business environment.
Career Development Plans
The research indicates that 55% of the employees report a desire for more professional development, 68% of whom think their current training is sufficient to do their jobs.
For effective management of personalized career development plans that are very useful to the goals of an individual employee with that of the organization, LXPs and LMSs prove to be very useful. These platforms also apply data of user activity to suggest materials for training relevant to the employeeтАЩs career path. Furthermore, based on the identified skills as well as performance statistics, LMSs and LXPs can come up with a developmental plan. Besides, it increases employeesтАЩ job satisfaction while creating a favorable environment where employees are encouraged to learn and perform optimally in their workplaces.
Keeping Up with Industry Trends
LMS and LXP platforms enable organizations to not only respond but to be well-positioned and even excel in the changes that occur within the industries. Many specialists stress the fact that to be effective in the modern realities of a knowledge-based economy and global competition, one must learn constantly. With the help of the LMS and the LXP, the flow of courses and real-time information that reflects business growth matches the pace of developments in the industry and is provided to the companyтАЩs workforce. This is a preventive measure in a way to ensure that its human resources are conversant with new technologies and ways of working providing for a flexible culture.
These platforms define the structure for training that assists organizations in presenting solutions relevant to the existing trends and advanced technology. If details for training are updated regularly, employees can learn new features and tools before changes occur in the market; thus, they are always ready for the changes before competitors.
LMS and LXP enable organizations to design their future as they encourage the process of lifelong learning. Here, these platforms involve the provision of employee training and education by the various firms as a way of not only increasing the dynamism and creativity of the organizations, but also because the latter is shaped by a proactive employee base that constantly anticipates new developments within the industry.
Conclusion:
In the current business environment, learning Management systems (LMS) and Learning experience platforms (LXP) are not only favorable to an organizationтАЩs growth but are crucial. These companies, which provide diverse benefits for organizations, as a whole enable the creation of an attentive, knowledgeable, and adaptable workforce. Whether through initial training and learning, integration of software and content into learnersтАЩ daily schedules, or supporting the growth and updating of skill sets, LXPs and LMSs perform critical roles in the development of the workforce and the promotion of lifelong learning. Thus, the given platforms can be used as a cohesive system that will allow for satisfying various training and professional development requirements within an organization while adapting to the changes in the industry.
While using these tools to support the workers, businesses help to increase organizational capacities and promote learning as a fundamental value. Thus, the focus on employee development is mutually beneficial for the organization and its staff and increases the organizationтАЩs adaptability to changes in the global environment.
