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AEC & Manufacturing companies face significant training needs driven by technological change, compliance standards, market pressure, and an evolving workforce. Training provides the foundation for employee growth, is linked to job satisfaction and talent retention, and helps managers and business leaders at all levels understand the capabilities of their workforce and tie those skills to project success.
This seems well understood by many businesses in the AEC & Manufacturing industries. But it’s one thing to be sold on training as a concept, and another process to implement an effective training program. Many businesses are moving toward a hybrid solution that combines onsite training with a digital component; employees can benefit from dedicated training time with an instructor, and turn to elearning for in-the-moment problem solving.
The problem is that e-learning in the AEC & Manufacturing industries too often focuses on content alone—without considering the way that content is presented to learners. Few and far between are the learners who can keep up with all the industry knowledge by reading a textbook—but that’s essentially what a content-only package will give you. A Learning Management System (LMS), on the other hand, provides the software infrastructure to deliver learning, track progress, and connect training metrics to business growth. Here’s how.
The biggest hurdle in any learning and development initiative is just getting learners to take the first step. If a company invests in an learning management system and their employees never sign in, the investment is lost no matter how good the training content might be.
Overcoming this barrier is often an institutional challenge: organizations need buy-in from employees, managers, and leadership to ensure a learning solution sticks. But sometimes the biggest barriers come from the platform itself. If the learning content is in large blocks, if it’s hard to search, if it’s hard to mark progress or find where a learner left off—all these add layers of frustration to the learner experience. When accessing training becomes too difficult, learners will find an easier and faster way—like searching YouTube or asking for advice on Reddit—rather than relying on trusted and approved materials.
An LMS tackles these barriers head-on. If content is the “what” of learning, an LMS provides the “how.” An effective LMS delivers lessons in short, consumable pieces so that learners don’t have to block hours out of their day for training. It surfaces relevant training materials so that learners can jump into the most useful content right away, without having to wade through lessons covering topics they’ve already mastered. And it ties that training to a goal so that learners can feel they are making progress.
The drive to keep employee time billable is a significant roadblock for many training initiatives. Even when companies recognize the value of training in reducing mistakes and rework, improving work quality, and boosting efficiency, firms still need their workers to be on projects to stay profitable.
Many companies already know that there’s no inherent conflict in training and project work, so long as the time workers are using to find answers remains billable. As the software used by AEC & Manufacturing industry as grown more complex, the time needed to double check that a program is running properly or to look up how to use a certain feature is just part of the cost of doing business. Problems arise when employees aren’t able to find the answers they need easily, or when the easy answers available to them online come from unvetted sources.
Purchasing a content package is supposed to ensure that workers have reliable reference material on hand whenever they get stuck. But the content package alone doesn’t guarantee that employees will be able to find the answers they need quickly.
With an LMS, employees can have training content running alongside them as they work. If your organization has an internal process to follow, established best practices, or compliance procedures that can be hard to remember, your LMS can keep that documentation on-hand so employees don’t waste any time looking it up.
Training has many advantages to offer businesses in its own right, but the data businesses can gain from implementing an LMS expands those benefits significantly. For instance, LMS data can be linked to projects to determine how training impacted project success. Skill assessments can be used during the hiring process to compare candidate qualifications, and then those results can be fed directly into an LMS to support onboarding of the new hire. Employees can also point to training progress, new certifications, and contributions to internal knowledge sharing systems as metrics to support their job performance.
A content package on its own supplies none of this insight. Even if workers are using the training materials, unless they’re being used within a system that can track and report usage, businesses are losing an important feedback mechanism to understand if their training project is working or not.
By now we’ve hopefully made the case for integrating any content package for the AEC & Manufacturing industries within an LMS. The next question is: what LMS is the most effective for businesses within this sector? After all, employees need all kinds of training, and many organizations already have an LMS in place for HR-led initiatives, such as leadership training or other soft skills. Why wouldn’t businesses integrate a technical training package directly into that LMS?
While this is a tempting solution, the reality is that technical training content often requires more complex management than many businesses are prepared to support. Here are a few of the top drawbacks we’ve seen from working with customers who have struggled to use an LMS that wasn’t built for their industry.
Major limitations of a general LMS include:
Too often, a general LMS provides only half a solution—even when it’s combined with industry-relevant training content. If your organization is going to invest in high-quality, industry-relevant training, you need an LMS to match.
What sets an industry-built LMS apart from the generic option we just described? Here are a few of the most essential features an LMS solution for the AEC & Manufacturing industries should have for businesses who are incorporating training as a central element of their business growth strategy.
Establish an accurate baseline for understanding the skillsets and capabilities of your team so that you can track improvement over time. Identify skill gaps and assign new training accordingly. Assess job applicants and help new hires onboard faster.
Use skill assessment scores to start employees on a learning path that’s a match for their knowledge level. Assign courses based on an employee’s job position and responsibilities. Allow learners to add content to their own training libraries.
Create workflows that follow your internal production standards. Ensure that employees follow best practices and capture valuable updates.
Align your training needs with the advanced programs your employees rely on to work efficiently. Incorporate training alongside their day-to-day workflow.
Track training progress and skill scores. Record learner achievements and qualifications. Make sure employees meet compliance standards for the projects they are assigned to. Compare team data to project health. Assign additional materials to workers who need more training support.
Content is still an essential component of your training solution—and an LMS focused on your industry should include a content package. Look for an LMS that has a dedicated content team, and talk to them about their processes for keeping their training materials up to date.
Businesses grow when they can bid effectively against their competitors, when their projects stay on time and within budget, when their employees thrive, and when satisfied customers renew the partnership. While many factors are at play, high-quality training programs contribute to every one of these outcomes.
A well-trained workforce delivers higher-quality work. High-quality work means fewer mistakes, less rework, and reduced waste. Eliminating errors keeps projects running according to plan, which means businesses can offer a leaner bid with greater confidence.
Critically, training is also an investment in your workforce—and a proven strategy for recruiting and retaining talent in a tight labor market. Prioritizing training sends a strong signal to your employees that they have a future with your organization, and that their professional growth is a key component of your company culture.
If you’re committed to investing in an LMS that supports business growth, then we recommend requesting a demo of Pinnacle Series LMS platform today. We’re known for the highest quality training content of leading software in the AEC & Manufacturing industries, including Autodesk, AutoCAD, and SolidWorks, all supported by a team of content experts. But we’re also known for our industry-leading skill assessment tools, our custom workflows, and our scalable training infrastructure that has allowed our users to develop their own databases and archives of learning materials and internal best practices.
Whether you’re a team of twenty or twenty thousand, we can deliver an LMS grounded in industry-relevant content that will support your organization as you aim for the next level of growth.
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