LMS Meaning Explained: What is a Learning Management System?

Have you ever wanted to put all your training programs, development records and completion reports in one place? That, at its core, is what a Learning Management System does. It’s a system to help you track everything to do with learning and development for employees: annual compliance training, online webinars, self-guided learning modules. You can store it all in your LMS, and that’s just the start.

If you aren’t familiar with what an LMS is and why you might want to use one, you’re in the right place. In just a few minutes, you’ll have a great grasp on:

• What a Learning Management System is
• How it can benefit your organization
• Evolving your LMS beyond the basics
• Connecting your Learning Management System to other processes

What is a Learning Management System?

Essentially, an LMS is a system that helps you create, deliver, and monitor learning within your organization, helping individuals to learn, grow, and (where necessary) remain compliant. 

It has three main functions:

1. Create learning content: The simplest function of your LMS is to hold training materials – videos, quizzes, webinar sessions, training programs. You can add multimedia resources and interactive content and then organize them to make it easy for employees to access. An LMS also allows you to add tailored content to ensure employees receive relevant and engaging training.
2. Plan training and enroll learners: How often do you review an employee’s training plan? Once a year maybe, if they’re lucky. Without an LMS, training plans tend to gather digital dust almost as soon as they’re agreed. Having an LMS, however, means you can make these live documents. You’re able to identify specific learning needs, create learner profiles, and enroll employees in courses relevant to their role.
3. Monitor, track, and report the effectiveness of learning: Keeping track of who’s attended training and how well they’ve applied it is always a challenging task. It can be hard enough to keep up with cancellations! Using an LMS means that pain goes away. You can automatically track completion and run reports on knowledge quizzes; spot anyone who’s skipped training multiple times. And run reports to check your programs are meeting organizational requirements.

What an LMS means for your organization – key benefits

A few of the benefits have been touched on already. For example, better program management, more streamlined administration, easier storage of training materials. So let’s look at the business benefits of an LMS and why you might want to have one:

• Higher employee engagement and lower attrition: Businesses who focus on personal performance experience five per cent less attrition than those who don’t. Your LMS lets employees see what training’s available and use that to inform conversations about career aspirations and personal development.
• Consistency across departments: Within your Learning Management System you can develop tailored programs for certain roles. You can then enroll all relevant employees e.g. salespeople, account managers, or line managers, to ensure they get the same core training regardless of which team they’re in.
• Increased productivity: Employees can log in and complete sessions whenever they like. It means they can organize training sessions around other projects rather than get pulled out of critical client meetings.
• Demonstrate return on investment (ROI) and compliance: Run reports from your LMS to see which courses are getting the best results. Who’s applying the learning most effectively? How many people have completed annual compliance training since May? Your LMS pulls this data quickly and efficiently without you raking through hundreds of reviews and attendance sheets.
• Get the benefit of scale: You no longer need to face the issue of what happens when you recruit more people. Your Learning Management System provides an organized structure where you can add new learner profiles easily. And you can flag essential training and add quizzes to check comprehension. Meanwhile you can look at themes for the content you’ll need next.

What else your LMS can do

Now depending on the LMS you have, you’ll be able to do lots of things that could benefit your organization:

Deliver training to your mobile

Firstly, not everyone has access to a computer and screen, some only have their phones. Using a mobile LMS, you can roll out training that’s optimized for mobile users, giving them access to training in their pocket. Systems like Learn365 offer a mobile app so the user can complete training wherever and whenever they like.

Create learning pathways

Secondly, when used effectively, your LMS can help you create development paths for your teams. Help them see how they get from their current role through to the next step and beyond, with clear training programs to aid their development to get there.

Identify skills requirements

Where is the business going? Are you changing direction or developing new products? As those come onto the market, your sales, marketing, and customer service teams will all need to understand what they are and how to support or sell them. Using an LMS, you can enroll everyone who needs it in new product training, so employees can answer queries as soon as they come up.

Ultimately, once you get used to your Learning Management System, there are so many things it can do. It’s all about getting the best from it for your organization. And with around 49% of students completing online courses, it makes sense to incorporate online training into their work too.

Connect your LMS to other employee processes

Altogether, the greatest benefit comes from connecting it to other things. You want your LMS to feed into your goal-setting process. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) need to link to career plans and skills development. Plus, being able to see how your contribution fits into the wider business vision helps you develop yourself, and drives higher engagement and more commitment to the organization.

So, what you ideally need, are learning, performance, and engagement systems and platforms you can link together to pull reports, gather insights, and demonstrate results. Using a Microsoft-based LMS,  you can integrate this seamlessly with your existing Microsoft apps, helping you focus on your people’s needs and values, and driving business success.