Modern employees value professional growth and development, it’s not just about the paycheck. If a company doesn’t want to see high turnover of their best and brightest, it’s important to offer satisfying opportunities for professional development. Of course, employee turnover is not the only reason that professional development is important. Companies can see substantial advantages when they integrate a robust learning and development programs, such as, cultivation of leadership, more internal hiring ability, increase in job competency and efficiency, and happier, challenged employees. One of the most flexible, modern, robust ways to enhance professional development at your company is through the implementation of an Learning Management System (LMS).

A brief explanation of an LMS

On a high level, an LMS is a platform that allows administrators to upload learning content, assign that content through personalized learning paths, and track and analyze user data. Learn more about the capabilities and limitations of an LMS here. 

Now let’s look at the ways a new LMS can enhance and provide professional development for your valuable professionals.

 

1. Introductory Assessments Build a Learner’s Profile

Because an LMS is built to not only provide content but to track and assist each learner individually, the first step toward professional development is to build a learner’s profile. This might include preferred learning styles, their current level of knowledge and skill, test-taking affinity, and certain personality quirks that can affect a professional’s ability and preferences for learning. When each current and new employee takes an introductory assessment, you can create a detailed profile for them within your LMS that will serve to support their professional development efforts in the future.

2. Personalized Lessons to Strengthen Weaknesses

Every professional has strengths and weaknesses, and often professional development is about building on both in a positive way. An LMS can be used to assess the exact areas where each professional could use a little extra improvement and then provide the right training material for the job. Let’s say you have a programmer who’s great at writing code but their documentation is disorganized or often missing, something often complained about by their team. A properly equipped LMS can make it possible to run this developer through a friendly training program that prompts them to document test-code in an organized and predictable way. After a few weeks of practicing 15 minutes a day with the LMS, your programmer now habitually remembers to document in a way that can be read and used by their team and increasing their total value as a professional programmer.

3. Weekly Refreshers

An LMS can be used to provide personalized refreshers for information that is known but often slips over time. Weekly refreshers can be reminiscent of quizzes in school. They can be short assignments every Monday, for example, to get everyone in the right mindset for work after the weekend. Refreshers help employees keep goals, knowledge and policies fresh in the mind. From remembering safety procedures to financial best practices, an LMS can keep track of the skills each professional and team need to focus on, in an interesting new way, instead of the same old hand-out nobody reads anymore. If you team uses Slack, check out this elearning quiz app for Slack called QuickQuiz. Users can send a fun quiz to their learners along with a piece of content to for instant learner feedback information.

4. Staying Up-to-Date on Industry Knowledge

Technology continues to propel the world forward and every industry is consistently changing to keep up with these advancements. From medicine to law to cyber security, it is vital to build in forms of professional development to ensure that the organization and the employees who run it are staying competitive in your industry. An LMS is a great tool to use in this regard because of the fast and flexible nature of it. Administrators can quickly update the platform with new, updated learning material in a matter of seconds, and can also incorporate pre-built courses from elsewhere on the web for their convenience.

Continued in part 2

You may have noticed that this is only the first four of our ten promised ways to enhance professional development through the integrated use of an advanced LMS. We invite you to join us for the second half of this two-part article where we’ll cover points 5-10 ranging from making smart coursework recommendations for your employees to adding that special personal touch with live chat and in-lesson communication techniques. If you’d like more information about how the capabilities of a Learning Management System can help your business enhance your employees’ professional development, contact us today! Click here to continue on to Part 2.

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