Use your LMS to automate employee onboarding training

It takes a significant amount of time and money to hire new workers. According to one report, the average U.S. company typically spends $4,000 and 52 days to hire a new employee. In addition, onboarding accounts for a significant expense.

According to an analysis by GlassDoor, just the paperwork and administrative parts of onboarding can be costly. For example, let’s say a company hires 50 employees each year, and the recruiter earns $25 an hour and spends 10 hours processing documents. That’s a total of $12,500 spent just on this portion of the process.  

Using your learning management system (LMS) to automate onboarding can significantly reduce costs, shorten your onboarding process, and make it more efficient and appealing to new workers. Below are some of the benefits of automating onboarding through LMS.

Eliminate Time Constraints

Your organization’s onboarding process may include various levels of training and information sessions. Trying to work around a trainer’s or instructor’s busy schedule could push back sessions for days, weeks, or even months. Using your Learning management system lets the company provide training and other onboarding information at any time, and gets the job done faster.

Abolish Location Limitations

If your company is like most organizations, finding empty spaces in which to conduct onboarding sessions can be a challenge. These activities often compete with team and staff meetings and other types of gathering. In addition, space limitations often determine how many people can attend each onboarding session. With your LMS, new workers can view training modules anywhere on a computer. Using their headphones, they can complete onboard training at their desks.

Ensure Compliance

Most companies have policies that employees must read and sign. These can include company procedures and even the company handbook.  Other documents and forms include local, state, and federal guidelines; sexual harassment policies; and social media policies. An LMS can house all of these plus documents that explain insurance and health benefits, vacation days, sick leave, and attendance policies. You can even use the system to upload the employee’s job description. By placing these forms and policies in your LMS, you can simplify the process of disseminating this information without giving employees access to sensitive HR software accounts.

Reduce Costs

By moving your onboarding process to your LMS, you can reduce the amount of time it takes to onboard new workers. By reducing the process from days, weeks, or months to mere hours, your trainers and instructors can reclaim their time, saving the company money.  And by getting new employees up to speed in a relatively quick time, they can start contributing to the company’s bottom line faster. The less time-seasoned and new employees spend training, the more time they can spend on revenue-earning tasks.

Customize Learning

You can customize the LMS to include the levels of training modules that employees must complete before they can start work. The modules can also include an assortment of tests and quizzes designed to gauge the new employee’s level of understanding. Based on the employee’s test score, they can be prompted to view additional modules to review the information again, or perhaps view it in another format, and then be retested. By building tiered training programs, employees can learn new skills that will enhance their current and future positions with the company–on their own time.

Track Progress

It can be tedious manual work for HR teams to keep track of which forms and training sessions new employees have completed and which are still outstanding. However, you can set up an LMS to keep track of this type of information in one central location where both the new employee and their HR contact can track progress. The LMS can also send detailed reports of each employee’s progress to stakeholders. Many LMS programs send email reminders and deadline to onboarders that notify them of upcoming activities.

When teams are ready to track the effectiveness of their training programs, the LMS can also be used to analyze the courses. For example, for any given test, you can get a report detailing what percentage of new employees passed or failed a test and how many have not started the test yet or are currently taking it. If a high percentage of people fail the test, this may be an indication that either the test or the training module needs to be reevaluated.

Disseminate Other information/Create Culture

The LMS can include not only documents but also videos and photos. Companies can use the system to create messages such as a welcome video from the team or a personalized message from the boss. Even a photo of the new employee’s teammates can help them feel more at home in their new environment. In fact, an online photo directory with each team member’s photo, name, and title is another great way to speed up the onboarding process and avoid those awkward, “Is this Sharon or Margaret?” moments.

Uploading the company’s org chart is another way to help new employees understand the company. And, of course, the organization’s mission statement, core values, and other pertinent information can help the new worker understand the workplace culture.

While onboarding is typically an expensive and time-consuming process, by using your LMS to automate it, you can increase effectiveness and reduce costs, while at the same time reducing the manual labor each HR team member and manager spends on training.

Terri Williams is a writer for TechnologyAdvice.com. She has covered business and tech topics for a variety of clients, including The Economist Careers Network, Intuit Small Business Blog, Investopedia, The Houston Chronicle, Daily News Energy, and Homeland Preparedness News. Follow her on Twitter @Territoryone.

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