Today’s top-performing businesses know the value of knowledge-sharing in the workplace. As commander Stanley McChrystal of the U.S. and International forces in Afghanistan put it, “Information is only of value if you give it to people who have the ability to do something with it.”
This wisdom applies equally to the workplace, where employees must have access to the proper training to use the information they are given in a way that benefits both individual and company objectives. To maximize an employee’s value to their workforce, modern businesses strive to provide access to training materials regardless of the worker’s location.
To any business, the process of rolling out a learning management system that enables knowledge-sharing for geographically dispersed teams is a valuable one. But that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. Many LMS providers offer a free version that allows businesses to create course assignments, send pre-tests and post-tests, manage Q&A forums, and more without any upfront costs. Not only is this a great way to test an LMS in your infrastructure, but it’s also an opportunity to learn which features will help turn your learning and development workflow into an environment of continuous learning for every employee, regardless of their work model.
1. Engage On-Site Employees
According to Gallup data, remote employees are now engaged in their work at higher levels than hybrid and on-site employees. This is an interesting reversal of an ongoing trend for the last decade where geographical dispersal has been viewed as an obstacle to engagement. Why has this happened? What are the implications for learning management workflows moving forward?
The rise of LMS software and increasing technology literacy may have contributed to this change. Modern employees recognize digital learning tools and the opportunities they provide better than past generations. With easy access to learning materials in an online format, remote workers can stay engaged in their workplace culture without sacrificing the benefits of remote work.
In fact, in a survey by the Harvard Business Review, 85% of remote workers reported that digital collaboration tools were one of the most critical factors in determining their engagement and job satisfaction. The message is clear: employees want to learn, develop, and communicate through workplace technology.
This is an important revelation for companies that offer on-site as well as remote and hybrid work options. Whereas learning engagement used to strive to make remote workers feel like on-site employees, the reverse may now be true. Learning management now focuses on connecting on-site, hybrid, and remote employees to the digital company infrastructure to engage them in their workplace community in the way that makes the most sense to them.
2. Reduce Worker Stress
While remote employees may lead the pack in terms of engagement, they also lead in terms of worker stress levels. Organizations in every sector struggle to improve the value of their workforce against the threat of employee burnout and rising turnover rates, especially among remote and hybrid workers in remote locations.
Since engagement has nearly four times as much positive impact on employee stress levels as location, an LMS that creates an engaging and inclusive team environment for remote, hybrid, and on-site worker interactions can have a wide-reaching impact on turnover rates, productivity, and employee burnout.
The ability to include all users for free allows a free LMS to create an engaging and inclusive team environment regardless of geographical location or the business’s performance management budget.
3. Personalize Learning Experiences
Modern employees want to engage with learning materials on interconnected platforms. Even on-site workers want to move between their phones, laptops, and other devices to access important materials, engage with their co-workers, and catch up on their schedules.
A centralized LMS allows managers to assign tasks, customize messages, and manage objectives for team groups, location groups, or even individual workers. By streamlining individual workflows using an LMS, team leaders will have a better understanding of their goals and a better ability to communicate them to their teams.
A versatile LMS can also help team leaders manage employee feedback through surveys customized to a business’s objectives. They can even be refined to the goals of an individual team or location group to better examine the strengths and weaknesses in those groups.
Gamification – the use of gaming practices to encourage L&D participation in business – can be employed to further personalize the employee’s experience. By offering game concepts such as leaderboards, team games, badges, and other incentives, even a free LMS can improve productivity by increasing engagement with proven communication and team-building tools.
4. Allocate Resources More Effectively
An LMS like Qbic that offers free plans with no upfront costs saves businesses millions on costly experimentation. Conventionally, a new performance management software service requires costly integration with current systems, subscription fees, and other upfront costs. Being able to try out an LMS without those costs allows businesses to spot bottlenecks in their performance management workflow as they test the waters with the free system.
Notably, a free LMS is not a “free trial” of a larger service. The free version is a fully functional version of the software with fewer features, built for businesses that want to test the waters of learning and development software without wasting resources.
The resources they save can then be allocated to other critical areas in employee development, such as mentoring costs, health resources, and digital infrastructure. Businesses should not be forced to think of learning and development as a fringe expense that encroaches on their valuable HR resources. With a free LMS plan, you can bank on having versatile learning resources available on any budget.
5. Create an Environment of Continuous Learning
Investing in employee learning means fostering an environment where employees can continue sharing knowledge, upskilling in their fields, and connecting their work with the company’s goals. This is only possible when certain conditions are met in their learning and development workflows, including:
- Easy access to training materials regardless of their work model
- Updated scheduling and messaging services
- Team collaboration tools
- Readily available safety and training materials
- Consistent access to management feedback
A free LMS can provide these tools to all of a company’s users, giving them free access to the company’s digital learning and teamwork structure. Companies that create courses can even share them with partners, vendors, and other outside parties for free to grow the learning culture outside the business’s branded spaces.
6. Provide Access to Course Materials
In addition to team spaces, messaging, and gamified materials, a free LMS can offer easy access to courses that a business can purchase individually and distribute to its employees. Rather than shouldering upfront costs for the system, businesses only pay for what they need.
For example, you can buy mandated annual compliance materials, distribute them to the relevant teams, and update them as needed. Authorized company users can access the courses from any connected device. The business can distribute and share the courses with employees all over the world, satisfying their compliance needs while helping employees engage with their company message and team leaders even from remote positions.
The Takeaway for Businesses
Commander McChrystal concluded by saying, “Instead of knowledge is power … sharing is power.” A learning management system provides businesses with a way to engage employees in learning and development courses through knowledge sharing, regardless of their geographical location. Businesses can enforce compliance practices, distribute feedback, track team progress, and gamify employee workspaces with engagement-focused paradigms that encourage communication and friendly competition.
Most businesses know the benefits of a versatile LMS, but many struggle to find room in their L&D budgets for the upfront costs required to take advantage of them. These businesses may not know that versatile LMS vendors like Qbic offer free versions of the LMS, not merely free trials. A free LMS provides many of the same benefits as a full version, including the ability to communicate with team leaders, encourage learning, and distribute courses to employees, for no initial cost.
Elevate Your Compliance Training for Free with Qbic
The Q Store offers options for businesses to find the perfect L&D solutions for their workforce without paying upfront for the system. Contact our team today to learn how even a free plan with a versatile LMS can take your training and development workflow into the modern age.
