In the current public health crisis surrounding COVID-19, every company has to rethink many if not most aspects of their operations. Corporate knowledge growth has always been an ingredient for business success. Some companies have taken a very active role in training and developing their employees while others have relied on the passive knowledge gained from the casual interactions employees have with each other and their superiors that happens every day in the workplace.
Now the “workplace” has become a distributed, isolated, remote environment where most employees are isolated from colleague interactions most of the time. As most companies are entering their second month of this new reality, they will begin seeing the strain it is causing on their employees that rely heavily on coworker interactions.
Take Advantage of Learning Management Platforms
Decisions companies make during this trying time will determine their long term health, well after this health crisis has abated. Companies that make a deliberate investment in maintaining and reinforcing the knowledge of their workforce will not only keep morale high, but ensure retention of their most valuable staff.
So the decision to invest in corporate learning management is the easy part, choosing the path forward with the correct LMS is much more complex and difficult. But the decision can be made easier by evaluating the particular needs of your organization.
Three Main Considerations For An LMS
1. Audience
When considering “who” to train, it's often a multi-prong approach.
- Professional Staff - Most likely your professional staff will be the ones that will be required to work remotely 100% of the time. Your professional staff will benefit from self-paced content from a broad spectrum of sources. Translating corporate specific knowledge into easily understandable short multimedia content will allow them to consume from a variety of devices. Staff will also need some scheduled collaboration time that can be easily facilitated by either a senior staff member or or a contracted facilitator.
- Front Line workers - Workers that require to be physically present will still have to acquire new knowledge to work safely in times like these. “Bite size” courses that can be taken during breaks via a mobile device are a great option.
- Customers - Many businesses rely on person to person orientation and ongoing continuing education in order for their customers to safely and effectively operate their products. Providing easy to consume digital training options with completion incentives are an excellent way to stay connected with your customers.
- Channel Partners - Often businesses rely on a stable ecosystem of distributors, retailers, operators, etc to effectively provide their products and services to their customers. Every one of these partners will need to reorient themselves to a new way to use their products effectively.
2. Content
There are as many sources of training content as there are training needs.
- Legacy - Some companies have some prior content currently available in VHS, DVD, and even paper format. It can be relatively easy to convert these into web based sources to easily distribute.
- Company Specific - With the prolific use of social media video content, there is a broader acceptance for “non-produced” video content. So companies should feel comfortable using its own staff to develop content around their proprietary needs.
- Domain Specific - Whether it’s equipment in use or regulated procedures, there are often external sources that can easily provide content that can get a program up quickly.
- Public - When there is a national health crisis or a similar broad based need for information sharing, a corporate LMS can be a great asset to validate that your valuable staff are receiving and understanding the new activities and procedures that their local authorities are requesting they follow.
3. Delivery
Great content is worthless if a company does not have an effective method to deliver it to their staff.
- “Home grown” systems - May present an appealing option to companies that wish to have finite control, but without taking on significant ongoing expense, their programs can become outdated and ineffective.
- Custom built - Similar appeal to DIY systems, but will require a similar level of expense and not benefit from upgrades that can be funded from multiple LMS clients.
- Multi-tenant solution - is a great compromise providing a custom branded solution along with the benefit of being on a platform that provides ongoing upgrades.
- Industry Platform - Usually the least expensive option is to buy “seats” on an industry based or general public LMS platform that provides content in a fairly generic format and usually requiring employees to jump from platform to platform.
Deciding Which Option Works For You
All of these options have merits that should be analyzed with respect to your specific needs. Brandmovers has a broad range of options to assist any company when needing to navigate this new (and urgent) need.
Brandmovers has been operating LMS programs internationally and currently operate within the University system in the United Kingdom with an USP (Accreditation with Universities); we can bring this pedigree to your organization for a fraction of the cost of the legacy providers. Our experienced staff can consult with your leadership team to review your needs with respect to audience, content and delivery. We can help provide a budget and a phased approach to help you get up and running quickly to address your most pressing needs.
