6 Tips to Get the Most from Your Elearning Platform

A few key focus areas can elicit big results from your Learning Management System.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is an investment—in your workforce, and in the future of your organization. Implementing an elearning platform like Eagle Point’s flagship LMS, Pinnacle Series, requires a certain amount of up-front cost and labor: identifying goals, managing software integrations, training employees, developing content, and more. If you’re going to put in the effort, you understandably want to encourage the best possible return.

Here are our six tips for maximizing the return on your elearning investment.

Make your LMS foundational.

One straightforward way to drive engagement with your LMS is to embed it in multiple stages of the employee experience. If employees have been interacting with your LMS since before they were hired, they’ll already be comfortable using it, and it won’t be a leap for them to engage more deeply over time. For current employees, shifting more knowledge and processes to the platform showcases its value and offers them an opportunity to familiarize themselves with it alongside their peers. 

A comprehensive LMS like Pinnacle Series is equipped to tackle this wide range of roles. Assessments provide a key pre-hire tool for understanding employee skills and gaps, and enables a highly relevant, tailored onboarding and training experience. Knowledge capture tools and varied content formats—workflows, for example—give employees a flexible repository and an accessible reference for institutional knowledge. 

Initially, driving activity to the LMS might require an up-front documentation effort by management. But as adoption increases and the platform gains momentum, content will grow richer and regular use will keep it fresh, creating a self-sustaining pattern of engagement. 

Microlearning content is a valuable asset.

Perhaps the greatest hurdle to LMS success is a simple one: time. Carving out the time for a long-term goal like learning can feel impossible for employees, especially in fast-paced, high-performance workplaces. This mental and logistical hurdle can pull the rug out from under an implementation before it really has a chance to get off the ground, suppressing engagement and sidelining your learning and development (L&D) investment. But that’s where microlearning comes in.

Microlearning content provides an ideal counterpoint to adoption challenges. Quick videos and how-tos are digestible and accessible, providing exactly the right information at precisely the moment it’s needed. Employees can easily interact with microlearning when out in the field, when a software question arises, or even when they simply have a few minutes free. And when learners can immediately apply the knowledge they’ve gained, they’re more likely to retain it. 

Microlearning lowers the barrier to engagement with your LMS, emphasizes the relevance and applicability of the content, and boosts the effectiveness of learning. A focus on creating and sharing content in a microlearning format will go a long way toward popularizing the platform within your workforce.

Embrace user feedback.

Leadership may be tasked with guiding the future of your organization, but the expertise on current day-to-day operations lives with your employees. They’re a valuable source of detailed information on the success of your learning strategy: how the platform feels to use, whether content is accessible and relevant, whether they feel like it’s helping them reach their goals—in short, whether your LMS is working.

Be explicit about eliciting and incorporating user feedback. Giving users a voice in your L&D strategy drives engagement and helps employees feel invested in the results. Moreover, it allows you to leverage their expertise into an implementation that works the way your learners do, and sets you up to maximize the benefits of your investment.

Don’t be afraid to delegate.

If employees are the experts in day-to-day operations, then it’s functional group leaders who can offer crucial perspective on content. While organizational leaders may make content suggestions based on alignment with broader organizational goals, it’s the team leads and supervisors who have the clearest view into the specific development needs of their people.

With privileges to share and assign content, functional managers have the power to address the most relevant and urgent skill gaps within their teams. This shortens the distance between need and solution, and draws the most direct line possible for learners between LMS use and job performance. 

Reporting unearths actionable insights into skills and performance.

Your employees’ talent is your organization’s greatest asset. The skills within your workforce are resources you can deploy strategically, in order to tackle a unique challenge or create cross-functional collaborations on a project team. By the same token, understanding the skill gaps within your organization can highlight opportunities to pivot or expand your market through targeted training. In each case, getting a more in-depth, detailed look at the skills that exist within your workforce helps you focus your energies in the most productive ways. 

A richly featured LMS like Pinnacle Series will offer reporting options that highlight users’ skill assessment results, course completion, and progress over time, helping you build a comprehensive view of strengths you can lean on and gaps you can target. Armed with this knowledge, you can ensure that your L&D strategies are targeting the highest-value goals and putting your employees in a position to succeed.

Culture is key.

Of all the organizational factors which contribute to the success of your LMS, none might be more impactful than a culture of learning—and culture demands reinforcement at every level of the organization. Leadership’s behavior and expectations show employees where priorities lie, so if learning is a strategic goal, it’s essential that leaders communicate their support.

In practice, that can be as elaborate as developing incentive structures for learning achievement, or as simple as verbally acknowledging the importance of taking time to engage with the LMS. When employees feel authentically encouraged to seek knowledge, the benefits to your organization can reach surprisingly far.

A culture of learning produces a workforce that is knowledgeable, agile, and resilient, giving your organization the tools to navigate periods of change gracefully. Strong L&D also makes employees feel valued and highlights growth opportunities within the organization, which are key to attracting and retaining top talent. In short, the combination of a quality LMS and a culture that utilizes it can transform your organization, which is arguably the best ROI you could ask for.

Pinnacle Series provides the solid foundation for your L&D achievement.

Pinnacle Series offers a content library comprising thousands of courses from leading Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Manufacturing industry software providers. More than a simple container for learning content, however, Pinnacle Series also equips managers with a feature-rich, flexible framework on which they can build their organization’s ideal learning experience. Assess skills, create and manage content, and cultivate your organization’s single source of truth with Pinnacle Series. To see the platform in action and learn more about what it can do for your organization, schedule a demonstration today.