Demonstrate the ROI Benefits of Your LMS
The return on investment (ROI) of any software is a crucial metric for organizations. When it comes to learning management platforms, it can be difficult to determine how best to identify and calculate the benefits of your LMS investment. In this article, we share 7 ways to measure the impact of your learning platform.
The Importance of ROI Calculation
A return on investment, commonly referred to as ROI, is one of many key performance indicators that companies use to measure the profitability and performance of a certain system or approach. In short, calculating your ROI helps organizations make more informed decisions about whether a certain tool or method is benefiting their company in the ways that they intended.
“By calculating ROI, you can better understand how well your business is doing and which areas could use improvement to help you achieve your goals.”
– Erica Hawkins, CallRail
This metric can be used to determine the efficiency of any business expenditure, including that of a learning management platform.
With the rise of remote and hybrid work styles, being able to provide learning and training through a dedicated learning system has become paramount. But often the question still remains for organizations, “How do we measure the efficiency of this learning solution?”
The ROI of Company Learning
It’s frequently said that a company’s employees are their most valuable asset. So, it only makes sense that by investing in your employees, you, in turn, invest in the efficiency and resilience of your organization.
That is why more and more organizations are adopting learning management systems to create better opportunities for their employees to develop through dedicated training; especially as research shows long-term benefits of incorporating a continuous learning culture within an organization, such as improved employee motivation, retention, and productivity.
Aligning with these established advantages of company learning, here are 7 example measures and metrics organizations can use to guide their learning solution ROI calculation.
1. Employee Confidence and Productivity
Learning management platforms offer employees easy access to development courses, which simplifies and streamlines the training process. Plus, learning can be delivered in the flow of work, meaning the information they need is always close by and in a familiar environment.
When employees can easily find the information necessary for them to perform well in their work, their confidence increases, and productivity is boosted.
This is one way that organizations can begin to measure the efficiency of their learning systems; by following employees’ work performance and even surveying workers on how confident they feel in doing their job after completing a certain training course or accessing learning opportunities while in their work environment.
2. Employee Engagement and Morale in Hybrid Work Environments
Workplaces have shifted to incorporate more remote and hybrid work styles, meaning employees are now physically farther apart while still being expected to work closely together. Because of this, a central challenge that employees face is losing the sense of connection to their colleagues and the company culture as a whole.
By utilizing a learning management platform that can be accessed from wherever employees may find themselves, a centralized space for employees to connect is created. This connection can be bolstered by learning systems that integrate with workplace tools, such as Microsoft Teams, which offer accelerated access to collaborative tools like interactive meetings, group brainstorming, and straightforward chats and team channels.
Using employee engagement and overall company morale as a measurement of your LMS investment can be a great way to evaluate the more personal effects the system has on your employees’ mindsets.
3. Quality of Teamwork
As mentioned above, with more remote teamwork, organizations can struggle to replicate the teamwork that happens in physical spaces.
Utilizing a learning platform allows people within a team to learn, interact, and support each other without ever leaving the platform. It also provides management the chance to provide feedback and better analyze the progress a team is making through virtual channels.
With the agile tracking tools often available with learning management software, managers can monitor the quality of teamwork happening in the digital learning space and use this as one of their measures for the LMS’ ROI.
4. Employee Retention
In the age of the Great Resignation and Great Reshuffle, having a focus on employee retention is increasingly common in organizations.
Employing a learning platform to help with building an agile employee onboarding structure, continuous learning programs, and career development paths have been shown to significantly boost employee engagement and overall retention.
Therefore, using employee retention as a metric for tracking the ROI of your learning solution can be a powerful way to measure the effect it has on your organization.
5. Learning Progress and Course Completion
Learning management This means that it becomes easier for learning administrators to keep track of employee learning progress by monitoring how far along they progress in a course and the average time it takes for a learner to complete a course.
With this improved ease of tracking, organizations can use employee learning progress and the number of courses completed as ways to calculate the ROI of their implemented learning system and monitor overall employee engagement with learning material.
That said, with cues taken from learning management platforms for schools, HR should emphasize mobile access as a key feature to guarantee employee course completion, wherever they are.
6. Money Saved on Training
As the old saying goes, “time is money”. Digital learning platforms can save significant time on employee training, which in turn, saves organizations money spent on facilitating in-person types of learning opportunities.
As learning management platforms offer employees easy access to learning in the flow of work, and on their own time, the need for expensive in-person training diminishes.
Looking at the money saved on administering training through a learning platform is a strong measure to use when mapping out the benefits of your LMS investment
7. Security and Compliance Policy Observance
Compliance and security awareness training is relevant for all businesses, but for companies in highly-regulated industries, it is absolutely crucial. The cost of uninformed or uncompliant employees can be massive, especially when data breaches and policy fines are at play.
Learning management systems can deliver up-to-the-minute compliance and regulation support to employees, ensuring they are well-informed about security best practices and compliance regulations. By keeping staff working in a compliant way, the platform helps companies combat these high risks.
Therefore, measuring the cyber hygiene of your organization, through data security course completion, earned compliance certifications, and more, are great ways to calculate the security benefits realized from your LMS investment.
Identify the Impact of Your LMS
Having a dedicated learning platform has become an essential step in staying agile and competitive in the modern workplace. Not only do these platforms offer better development of your employees and increased collaboration among your teams, but they can also create diverse benefits for your entire organization, as mentioned above.
While it can involve a significant initial investment, the ongoing benefits of implementing a learning management solution can prove to create massive improvements in your company. And with more defined metrics to calculate the ROI of your learning platform investment, companies can more clearly recognize the advantages offered from this type of agile solution.
