Why a LMS is as Vital as Staff Performance Management

Managing your employee’s performance is vital, right?

In 2013, 95% of organizations in a research sample of over 1,000 companies worldwide stated that they set individual goals, whilst 89% used performance ratings (Source: Global Performance Management Survey Report).

It seems performance management in business remains in use and of chief importance.

But what about your staff’s learning and development?

Learning is a crucial component in the process of your workforce achieving their goals – both professionally and personally – but is it valued as highly in most organisations?

It’s a common problem:

Increasingly we’re pressured into result-based working styles – great for the short term, but not of as much use for the long term direction and growth of your organisation and brand.

This is to no fault of the organisations that employ us; we all have objectives that must be met.

• But how can we meet those objectives and deliver more?
• How can we ensure that next year’s achievable objectives are of a significantly elevated stature?

In this post I discuss why supervising your staff’s learning – specifically through the use of a Learning Management System (LMS) – is just as crucial to the success of your business as managing their performance is.

Purpose

When provided with an effective learning program, your staff will develop a greater understanding of their role within the wider operations of the business, rather than simply moving from task to task.

This instils a sense of purpose in people, encouraging employees to become further involved in activities that they may have previously deemed as surplus to their work interests or responsibilities.

Using a LMS, you’ll be able to tailor each individual’s training to their own interests;

• What do your employees desire to achieve in their roles?
• Which other areas would they like to expand their role into?
• Which trends are they interested – and/or see the merit – in pursuing?

The answers to these questions will guide you in identifying the knowledge your employees require to reach the next level within their role.

Opportunities

In providing the capacity for learning to occur, you are also actively establishing a platform for manufacturing increased opportunities for your organisation too.

Your organisation may then indirectly benefit from your employees’ progress with the opening of opportunities:

• With influencers (your staff are more likely to be able to successfully engage with authoritative industry leaders once they have the knowledge and capability to do so with confidence)
• For expansion – into new business areas, new product lines, extended reach etc. (as your workforce develop, as does your organisation’s overall in-house capabilities in working with new channels, new ideas and so on)

By taking an interest in your employee’s progress, you can then influence future training for the purposes of meeting these interests as well creating opportunities to benefit all stakeholders.

Empowerment

Encouraging your staff to learn new knowledge and skills empowers them as individuals, making them greater assets to the company.

Essentially, an investment in learning hands your workforce a platform from which to further apply themselves in their roles and ask more of themselves in the workplace.

What I’m trying to say is that you can utilise a Learning Management System to push performance rather than simply meet steady objectives with performance management alone.

Are your staff feeling increasingly confident with their new found knowledge? Set further progressive expectations and objectives, and justify this by assigning relevant learning opportunities in your LMS that enable your employees to meet these goals.

Respect

By guiding your employees to a more successful career and providing them with opportunities to progress beyond the current responsibilities of their role, you will gain respect as an employer – a highly valuable quality to possess.

Your staff will appreciate your time and interest in their development as an individual, and this respect for your employees will be rewarded in their attitude to work.

Whilst there’s no direct correlation with staff turnover, you are likely to see results in terms of productivity and morale when you:

• Schedule appropriate training for each employee
• Monitor your staffs progress and development in relation to their learning objectives
• Use your LMS in combination with face-to-face reviews to aid talent retention

Recognition

Staff are more likely to feel valued when you ask them what they want, what you can do for them, and how you can both benefit from this investment.

Quite simply, this process lends itself to better business relationships, a more positive shared outlook, and a harmony in work ethic, expectations and future direction.

Recognition of an employee’s capabilities and potential helps prevent restrictive doubts on creativity and efficiency from settling in.

Agreeing with each of your co-workers on a tailored, individual plan with realistic development achievements will easily allow you to make every member of the workforce feel recognised as valuable to the company.

Summary

A quick recap:

• Identify how and in which areas your employees roles can evolve into
• Create a mutually agreed plan/route with carefully planned and realistic milestones set along the way
• Encourage the development of opportunities for both individual members of your workforce and the organisation as a whole
• Empowering your workforce with knowledge to motivate and drive themselves forward within their roles
• Develop better relationships with your staff to cultivate and retain talent

Let’s be clear: performance management is vital.

However, what I wanted to express in this post was how important it is to provide your employees with an opportunity to experience performance enhancing emotions that will propel them in their role and career.

Ultimately, providing your staff with a platform from which to learn will greatly assist you in building a workforce full of talent and ambition who respect you and enjoy working as part of your organization.

If you’re considering implementing a Learning Management System, why not talk to an expert?

Contact Mindflash today to learn more about your options.

Author bio: Jordan Bradley works for High Speed Training (HST), a fully accredited specialist eLearning course provider based in the UK. He enjoys his responsibility of managing HST’s Hub – a blog which posts weekly insightful articles on a range of topics related to their array of online courses. Jordan spends the rest of his time running around the countryside, travelling on weekends to visit friends he wished lived closer, and fighting hard in the battle against laziness, amongst other things.

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