In 2023, employee engagement has become a higher priority as 93% of companies express concern over employee retention in the wake of the pandemic. For businesses of any size, turnover rates, training costs, and productivity hinge on employee engagement, which is why 80% of organizations reported that maintaining it was their top priority in 2022.
To that end, corporate learning management systems (LMS) provide a powerful tool to enhance employee engagement through training programs tailored to satisfy a business’s needs within the changing standards of the post-pandemic workforce. An LMS maintains a business’s workflow while improving productivity and turnover rates through personalized learning tracks, interactive content, reporting metrics, and other engagement strategies.
Understanding Employee Engagement
“Employee engagement” refers to a worker’s commitment to their job, company identity, and organizational goals. Notably, it is not the same as employee satisfaction – when employees are truly engaged, they socialize with their work community, go the extra mile to accomplish their organization’s goals, and prioritize upskilling in their field over looking for a new position. A cashier at a retail business may not be required to pick up trash on the floor around their workstation, but doing so demonstrates engagement in the company’s goal of creating a good customer experience.
Businesses that invest in learning and development to encourage engagement find that employee turnover rates lower as productivity and profitability increase. Engaged employees accomplish their organization’s goals, improve customer satisfaction, and mitigate expensive retraining costs, while unengaged employees are more likely to leave their current organization. As demonstrated in this LinkedIn study, being challenged and learning new skills ranks in the top 5 reasons an employee considers a job, so their engagement level with a company’s practices contributes to how likely they are to stay.
How a Corporate LMS Can Transform Training Programs
A corporate LMS maintains employee engagement by focusing learning and development materials on an accessible system that adapts to the unique workflow the organization already has in place. It does this by translating learning courses into a user-friendly interface, accessed conveniently by employees on their terms. The learning materials can be accessed outside the workplace on any smartphone, tablet, or computer, providing personalized learning experiences tailored to the employee’s needs.
By making corporate learning a self-directed experience that engages each employee in their learning journey, an LMS can reduce turnover rates and retraining costs while increasing productivity, compliance, and profitability through higher engagement.
Interactive Content and Gamification
Gamification, or using competitive design and other game ideas to improve corporate learning, is an example of how an LMS increases engagement by diversifying training tasks and encouraging cooperative learning. Videos, quizzes, and games allow companies to find different points of engagement with their employees, increasing learning retention by creating opportunities for cooperation and active participation.
A learning management system’s ability to award points and badges and display public leaderboards gives employees a sense of achievement, encouraging healthy competition. The rewards do not have to be tangible for employees to engage passionately with gamified learning materials – these rewards encourage productivity and cooperation simply by being part of the shared learning system.
Personalized Learning Paths
One of the drawbacks of conventional corporate learning is its lack of personalized learning experiences. Trying to fit an entire workforce into a one-size-fits-all course leads to employees or even whole departments falling behind and losing engagement. An LMS solves this problem with customizable learning tracks that admins can assign to different groups of learners, whether by departments, position changes, learning styles, or custom pathways for certain employees.
A versatile LMS offers a marketplace that can update development strategies by introducing new courses to custom learner groups. Personalized learning paths like these increase engagement by tailoring to the modern employees’ desire to upskill in their field and advance in their organization. Assigning a unified workspace that best meets each employee’s personal development goals allows company admins to retain employee interest throughout the learning process.
Social Learning Features
A corporate LMS can replace outdated training methods with a continuous, cooperative learning environment. In the modern age, social learning plays a significant role in such an environment. By providing a digital social network within the company’s workspace, an LMS allows employees to connect through shared goals, work on projects, and socialize within the LMS framework on discussion forums, leaderboards, chat rooms, and more. By encouraging knowledge-sharing practices, an LMS motivates employees to give each other access to meaningful resources and insights, creating knowledge loops that increase engagement.
Encouraging peer-focused learning is especially important in an age when remote work is becoming increasingly prevalent. Since a third of remote employees wish their organizations created more opportunities for remote socialization with coworkers, the need for engagement is already there – an LMS simply allows organizations to fulfill it.
Real-Time Feedback and Assessments
Continuous feedback allows administrators to keep tabs on different groups of learners. Using an LMS, these groups can be assigned separate communication channels and learning paths. This personalized system keeps employees focused on how they can upskill as individuals in their industry, become compliant, and advance their careers, significant factors in their willingness to stay in their current position.
To promote this personalization, an LMS has built-in features for real-time feedback on assessments and performance, which helps employees and admins track their progress and identify areas of improvement. Future courses can focus on those areas for the departments or learning groups that need it rather than try to fit the entire workforce into one program. Since over two-thirds of employees report wanting more feedback that focuses on their strengths and weaknesses, real-time assessments are an attractive part of any organization’s learning package, encouraging a sense of accomplishment and continuous learning within the company’s framework.
An LMS maximizes employee engagement in corporate learning and development by updating how companies engage with their employees’ learning journey. Instead of conventional teaching methods, an LMS fosters cooperative learning through a unified company workspace accessible anywhere. The principles of knowledge sharing, individualized learning tracks, gamification, and more allow an LMS to be adaptable to an organization’s goals.
As workforces change toward a more remote and skill-focused mindset, companies with systems that scale with their needs and goals will create and maintain learning environments that retain employee interest. To avoid expensive retraining costs and reap the benefits in productivity that come from engagement, an LMS offers modern organizations the tools they need to transform their training programs into a continuous learning environment tailored to the needs of individual employees, but on the organization’s terms.
