How To Onboard Staff Faster With An LMS

Kelli Cleary

As a busy web agency, you’re excited to hire new talent and keen to get them working right away. But onboarding any new staff takes time, and if it’s done poorly, it can lead to high employee attrition rates. It’s a slow and often laborious task that you mightn’t have time for, and it can be repetitive for experienced employees who have their own duties to perform.

Current employees want training for new skills, too, and you want to provide it – upskilling benefits them and your company. Training employees quickly and correctly saves you money and improves employee job confidence, so it makes sense to invest in a reliable way to train new and existing employees thoroughly.

Learning management systems (LMS) let you control the employee education experience without requiring your heavy involvement. It’s a light-touch task for you that delivers a comprehensive learning opportunity for them: a true win-win. Here’s our guide to choosing an LMS to help onboard new team members. 

So, what is a learning management system?

An LMS is a platform that lets you create course materials for employee onboarding and development programs, and then delivers them to your employees at their own learning pace.

You can teach anything through an LMS, from new-hire orientation courses to highly technical continuing education materials. Employees can access an LMS from anywhere via computer, tablet, or smartphone, whenever they want.

An LMS helps you create the courses you want your employees to take and then allows you to monitor their progress. That way, you can ensure they’re moving through the course material on time and understanding it as well. You can schedule tests and quizzes into the course and see how long each module takes employees to complete.

You’ll get a complete picture of how new and current employees are learning, so you can pause the course if needed and address anything they don’t understand. And they can submit feedback on the course and its materials so you can improve them.

An LMS is more than a handy tool for employers – it can become your agency’s standard onboarding or continuing-ed tool that saves you time and helps you retain your staff.

What are the benefits of using an LMS?

For any educational needs your web agency has, an LMS is incredibly beneficial. It makes educating everyone in your company more straightforward and faster. It creates a cache of quality educational material that’s always available to your staff. At a high level, the LMS offers these five benefits:

1. Saves you money and time

An LMS trains new hires quickly and gets them working productively as soon as possible.

In fact, using an LMS for your onboarding processes results in an 82% increase in new-hire retention and a 70% increase in productivity.

Best of all, you can train them without taking time out of your own hectic day. They simply log in to the LMS and start training. Forums in the software allow them to message experienced employees if they get stuck or need help, streamlining the onboarding process while also encouraging teamwork between old and new staff.

An LMS also allows you to onboard many new employees at once. It’s a cost-effective solution that scales beautifully, no matter how many new hires you may need to train.

2. Tracks employee progress

Within each learning module, you’ll be able to track your employees to see how they’re progressing. You can do that by designing quizzes for each segment of the material or by creating an exam at the end of the course.

If you notice an employee struggling, you can pause the course and allow them time to study it closer or update the course material to make it more transparent for learners. You can also monitor progress as a group to see which employees are learning the material well and which may need more help. That way, you can support your staff where they need it.

3. Builds staff confidence

When your employees understand how to do their job and what is expected of them, they feel confident. Confident employees are more productive and stay with your company longer.

You can build staff confidence with an LMS. New hires will understand their new jobs quicker with proper training, and they’ll be better educated in how to overcome job obstacles. 

Plus, they can practise needed skills in the LMS before trying them on customers.

Existing employees will see that you’re investing in improving their skills. They’ll be empowered to perform their current roles better, and they’ll have the confidence they need to expand their capacity.

4. Reduces turnover

Employee turnover is costly and can be demoralizing for your staff. By contrast, a good onboarding program can improve employee retention by 82%. An LMS reduces employee attrition by empowering new and old employees to perform their jobs well.

Having a detailed onboarding process reduces turnover rates, and even current employees can benefit from retraining to refresh themselves on the basics. With an LMS, your educational process is clear and accessible to all employees. They can get acquainted with your company or continue their education to the ultimate benefit of your web agency.

Plus, employees with access to education don’t feel that their career is stagnating in your agency. They see growth opportunities around them and are happier to stay with an organization that is investing in them.

5. Ensures staff meet company standards

An LMS standardizes the onboarding process, so you know that all new staff have received the same training, on the same schedule, with the same expectations.

You’ll also know that the training they received is on-brand and that it meets your web agency’s high standards. 

Once they’ve completed their onboarding through an LMS, new hires are uniformly equipped with high-calibre training.

They should have no problem performing their duties confidently and correctly.

Employees who haven’t completed the training or whose onboarding performance is lacklustre can correct these oversights within the LMS. It then becomes the responsibility of the employee to take charge of their education via the LMS, where all of the materials they need are provided.

How to choose the right LMS for your company

Like any investment, choosing a suitable LMS for your company and staff takes thought. Keep in mind that LMS software companies will have slightly different prices for different levels of features, so it pays to know the following things before you choose:

  • The cost of the LMS and how it fits with your budget

  • How long you’ll need to create new course materials

  • Which LMS software features are must-haves for your company

  • Your onboarding training budget

  • What kinds of multimedia materials needed

  • How many employees will be trained at one time

An excellent LMS that scales to companies of all sizes is LearnRight. This software allows for quick and easy scaling as your new hires grow and offers detailed analytics to monitor their progress through your courses.

LearnRight’s software lets employees learn collaboratively through chat rooms within the LMS, encouraging team building and knowledge sharing. It’s a solid LMS for onboarding new hires and upskilling current employees. Check out their onboarding solution here.

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