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An LMS helps close the manufacturing skills gap

Posted by Dan Wheeler on Fri, Sep 28, 2018

hardhat_peeps

Finding qualified candidates is getting more difficult, and the outlook is that it will continue to be a significant problem for manufacturers. The cost to a business is significant as positions remain unfilled and recruiting time and expense continues to increase. A learning management system (LMS) can help human resource managers retain and develop the skilled workforce needed to succeed.

Consider these statistics from Deloitte Consulting LLP and the Manufacturing Institute in their report The Skills Gap in U.S. Manufacturing 2015 – 2025.

It takes 90+ days to hire a new skilled worker
Six out of every ten open skilled production positions are currently unfilled
By 2025 as many as 2+ million positions won’t be filled as the skilled worker shortage worsens as baby boomers retire
82% of manufacturing executives say the shortage will negatively impact the ability to meet customer demands, innovate and expand
94% of executives said the most effective response is internal employee training and development

A learning management system (LMS) is a great solution to help overwhelmed human resources staff train and develop employees.

In addition to providing a training platform to build employee skills, an LMS can automate the administration, tracking and reporting of training and compliance certification. A few key reasons an LMS can help include:

A standardized onboarding program ensures new hires are oriented, trained and engaged. According to a 2018 study by Jobvite, 30% of workers quit a job in the first ninety days. Compare that to less than 10% if the company has a well-structured onboarding program. An LMS can help ensure new employees have the information and skills to be successful.
Building a strong learning culture increases productivity and worker retention. Businesses that build this type of culture have 30-50% higher engagement and retention rates than those that don’t. (David Mallon, Deloitte)
High-performing managers create high-performing teams. Manufacturers often put too little emphasis on training supervisors, despite the fact that the quality of the boss is a key factor in both worker performance and retention. An LMS can help you identify and train new supervisors to increase productivity and reduce liability.
Provide the information and training workers need, when and how they need it. According to a Brandon Hall study, e-learning takes 40% to 60% less worker time when compared to a traditional classroom setting, and knowledge retention rates are higher. An LMS makes you and your workers more efficient.

Your best strategy is to engage and develop your current workforce.

The manufacturing skills gap is only going to increase, as will the competition for skilled workers. Your best strategy is to engage and develop your current workforce, new hires and supervisors with a comprehensive learning and development program managed and tracked by robust learning management software.

And as Propel notes in their article on How to Solve the Manufacturing Skills Gap, never overlook your current workforce as an efficient and cost effective way to build needed skill sets.

The Prosperity LMS is built to support the needs of manufacturers, and our US-based team has the industry experience to make your training a success. Use our calendar to schedule a brief consultation or ask us a question.

And if you already have an LMS but still struggle with tracking employee competencies and skills, check out Skills Mark. Prosperity Skills Mark is the simple and straightforward solution for tracking and reporting on the job training and employee competencies and skills.

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Topics: elearning, training, learning management system, training development, manufacturing

Don't let overwhelm hurt your training and onboarding programs

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Aug 11, 2017

You were drawn to HR and training work because you’re passionate about helping people—developing new courses for them, registering them for training, and empowering them to do their best work.

Does your to-do list look like this?

Manage and track online courses, Manage training, Track training, Email students about deadlines, Organize course/content materials, Sell and deliver my content, Find a way to track eLearning content, Administer and track compliance, Track compliance audits, Report on training initiatives to management, Research LMS selection and LMS feature list, FIND A WAY TO DO ALL OF THESE BETTER.

But YOU can’t do YOUR job if the length of your to-do list is mind-stutteringly long.

Unfinished tasks are piling up. Your job description has silently (malignantly) expanded overnight, while your resources and time are still the same… or wait… are they shrinking?

How is there less time when you are working more? Nights and weekends on the clock, checking email before you’re even out of bed.

This unhappy asymmetry is a symptom of the always-connected-24/7-work environment. It’s infecting the workplaces and headspaces of HR and training professionals across the country, funneling them into a dark place…

Welcome to overwhelm.

You know what really sucks here? Employees who are cognitively overloaded are dramatically less productive.

According to research from professional services firm Towers Watson, employees suffering from high stress levels are less engaged, less productive, and miss more work than those not working under intense pressure.

It’s particularly vicious for HR, because if you can't do your job, the whole organization limps to a bleeding halt.

What happened to my day?

How many times did you check your email or social media? How many things are you doing at the same time, and how many of them did you actually accomplish?

Studies show that people check their mobile devices 150 times a day. They receive 122 messages every day, and spend a quarter of their day reading and answering them. At work, 57 percent of interruptions result from the use of social media or switching among different stand-alone tools and applications.

What happened to my productivity?

The always-connected-24/7-work environment is overwhelming workers, undermining productivity, and contributing to low employee engagement, according to Deloitte’s 2014 Global Human Capital Trends report.

And it hurts the whole company: according to the Deloitte report, “This constant and frenetic level of activity also costs money, perhaps $10 million a year for mid-size companies.”

Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, an expert on attention-deficit disorders (ADD), suggests that modern workplace stressors induce “attention deficit trait (ADT),” with symptoms similar to those of ADD.

“[ADT] is brought on by the demands on our time and attention that have exploded over the past two decades. As our minds fill with noise—feckless synaptic events signifying nothing—the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and thoroughly to anything,” writes Hallowell.

What happened to my poor monkey brain?

On a good day, your prefrontal cortex is the master of ceremonies of your life, which means you’re going about the business of supporting and managing your people.

But when you’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed, your calm, capable HR cool can evaporate, and your co-workers are rudely introduced to your secret “evil-twin” personality.

In evil-twin mode, your amygdala and the lower regions of your brain are flooded with a hormone called cortisol, which primes your body for fight or flight. This is a great hormone if you’re running away from a bear, but high levels of cortisol over long periods of time can wreak havoc on your brain, hindering your capacity for rational thought.

What to do? What to do?

Go ahead and wring your hands a few times, take a deep breath and

…prioritize your tasks

What jobs are time-critical? And which ones are you most dreading? Do those first.

…break your big projects into small steps

Focus on one manageable piece at a time, and celebrate each mini-victory.

…delegate or reject tasks

Step aside for a moment and see what jobs you can delegate or officially postpone.

…get some help

Don’t suffer in silence — it’s hard to meet goals when you’re in survival mode. Talk to your managers about your priorities, resources, and job description.

If your to-do list is still hideous, it’s time to enlist some digital assistance and implement or update your Learning Management System (LMS). A good LMS can streamline your processes, offload administrative work, and eliminate repetitive tasks.

Imagine a workday where employees were synchronized with an LMS.

Users of your system are automatically assigned training based on their jobs
Reminder emails and reports are sent autonomously
You are automatically tracking/applying continuing credits and certifications
You don’t have to provide technical support to your users.
You’re working with an experienced implementation and support team with deep corporate knowledge

You have time to do your real job! You are no longer personally signing people up for courses, sending reminders, tracking certifications—or making sure which state has what requirements.

Yes, there are a lot of systems to choose from (more than 500!) but don’t panic. We’ve got you covered.

We put together an LMS checksheet that will help you articulate the LMS feature list and requirements that would best meet your needs.

Happy de-stressing, and be sure to take it one step at a time.

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Topics: employee training, training development, learning management systems, global human trends

LMS Implementations: Four corporate learning lessons from NASCAR

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Jul 30, 2010

Nascar, lms

The LMS is at the starting line, the crowd is pumped, the flag drops and it’s off to the races.

Hold on just a second.

Employee training shouldn’t be a street race. It’s not sound business to jump into the shiniest hot-rod in the parking lot, find a reasonably straight stretch of blacktop and go hurtling off into the night, racing to meet your corporate eLearning goals without any thought to what lurks around the corner.

It’s better to steal a page from NASCAR and take a more methodical, professional approach to training development. Figure out where you want to go, find out who’s going to be in your way, and use the best equipment you can to get across the line first.

Here are four lessons for employee development from the world of racing:

Know the course

Professional racers don’t show up at the track and hit the gas, first they study the ins and outs of the course. You need to do the same. How long will the training take? How many people will be involved? Have you scheduled your pit stops effectively? Are there any quirks you need to account for that are particular to this course?

Use the best tools and technology available

Even the driver who finishes last – or crashes and burns – is an elite member of their profession, the best of the best. Sure, raw talent, guts and luck are important, but the machines themselves play a crucial role in who wins and who loses. Does your learning management system meet the needs of your learners? Do you have the eLearning software and hardware to go the distance? Is it easy to handle? Does it give your pit crew the data it needs to make effective assessments?

Have a capable pit crew

There’s a crew of unsung heroes behind any driver. Without them, the wheels will come off – literally. When it comes to computer-based training, you need a strong pit crew, as well. From the course developer to the administrator to the trainer to the back-end IT muscle to the vendor support, every link in the chain must be able to participate as needed.

Have fun

Drivers love what they do. It’s more than a job to them, it’s who they are. That may be asking too much of someone doing compliance training, but that doesn’t mean training still can’t be fun (or at least not un-fun). Make sure your online training provides a positive user experience.

OK, with these lessons in mind, now it’s time to wave the green flag: Ready, set, learn!

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Topics: lms, employee training, corporate learning, e learning software, learning management system, training development, employee development, computer based training, corporate e learning, online training

Training Development: Three keys to successful workplace training

Posted by susan reuter on Fri, Jun 18, 2010

In some organizations, these two words can often be a cause for annoyance, irritation or even dread: Employee training. corporate training, lms

Regardless of your position – c-suite, cubical-dweller, call center, etc. – being herded into a windowless room for (yet another) slide show can be a real buzz kill.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Continuing education is a major factor in the success of any organization, and most of your employees likely understand that.

So, what’s the problem? We believe there are three potential bottlenecks in the training development pipeline.

Sometimes its you

There are, of course, a number of factors inhibiting workplace learning, but with the right strategy and the right culture, these can be mitigated.

In terms of corporate learning strategy, here are some questions you need to ask: Do I have clearly crafted goals? Have I teased out the junk and focused on the meat of what I want my employees (or customers) to learn? Do I have a flexible system in place that provides on-demand, computer-based training options? Can I effectively measure the results of my efforts?

In terms of culture, does your organization do a good enough job promoting the virtues of workplace training? Do your employees understand how their training fits into the company’s overall strategy? Finally, are your employees excited about your brand? It’s one of those things that go hand in hand – people who are proud of what they do and look forward to solving challenges are also motivated learners.

Sometimes it’s them

While you can – and must – do everything you can to motivate your employees to learn, they also need to look within. As Shelley Gable points out in her blog post on Internet CE – “Motivate Yourself to Learn through Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction” – self-motivation is possible, and crucial.

In a related post, Gables makes yet another great point about how an individual can get the most out of their learning experience: Don’t try to multitask your way through it.

While there is some debate about the benefits and drawbacks multitasking out there, we believe employees – whether training in a classroom setting, in their spare time, or remotely via the Web – can get the most out of training by giving it their undivided attention, as opposed to texting, tweeting, checking fantasy baseball stats and then skipping back a few screens to search for what you already forgot.

Sometimes it’s the system

Your learning management system may be well-known in the industry, but does it do what you need? How easily can you adapt it to your specific requirements? How easy is the interface for end-users? Do you receive the kind of service and support you need to make it work for you?

If you go through the steps above to maximize your organization’s training efforts, you don’t want software to be a choke point, so look for a customizable, flexible, easy-to-use LMS that meets your needs.

Back in January, we posted a more in-depth blog entry about this specific issue, noting that choosing the right LMS can significantly affect “organizational benefits, ROI, and effectiveness of an organization’s training strategy and goals.”

The takeaway

A coherent training strategy and a culture of learning are essential to successful workplace learning. But so are motivated employees. And having the right software tools. Put all these things together and the sky’s the limit.

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Topics: employee training, corporate learning, learning management system, training development, computer based training

eLearning and Learning Management Systems news & May Notes

Posted by susan reuter on Tue, Jun 01, 2010

Here is this month's installment of recent e-learning-related blog posts and articles that are worth a second look:

Thou shalt eLearn

Since Cath Ellis offered her Ten Commandments of eLearning about a month ago, other eLearning prophets - including Abhijit Kadle at Upside Learning and Clive Shepherd - are sharing some commandments of their own. Taken collectively, these virtual stone tablets offer a nice, basic roadmap for planning out an effective training development strategy.

New toys

HTML 5 could be one of those game-changing eLearning tools, Craig Weiss writes in his e-Learning 24/7 blog. Find out why he thinks so in "HTML5 - Let the Games Begin!"

How free is free?

Ever since the Trojans accepted that free wooden horse from the Greeks, people have gotten unpleasant surprises by expecting something for nothing. The same is true with learning management systems, as Amit Gautnam of Upside Learning points out in "The Real Cost of a Free Open Source LMS."

When to learn

You may be ready to run an employee training session, but your staff may not be all that motivated to make the most of it. That's because, as Nemo Chu writes in a guest post on Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development, "For some organizations, knowledge workers simply aren't ready to learn in the workplace. Their Energy Star brains are burning like a 100-watt light bulb and they are more interested in a nap than they are interested in formal training." Chu's solution: mobile, on-demand learning.

The state of the LMS

While Jane Hart and Harold Jarche are questioning the future usefulness of the LMS, their Internet Time Alliance co-contributor Clark Quinn looks at what an LMS system could - and should - be used for in his post, "A Case for the LMS."

Crystal ball

"Futurity is always a risky endeavour particularly where technology is concerned," writes Derek Morrison in The Auricle, a UK-based blog dealing with digital learning. Despite that caveat, Morrison goes on to provide a thoughtful, in-depth look at how technology may enhance learning by 2015. Although we agree that predicting the future - particularly in the digital realm - is far from easy, this post is still worth reading.

The buzz on corporate learning and elearning tools only gets bigger, so if you don't have time to track down all the relevant news yourself, stop on by and we'll pass along what we found. Your suggestions are always welcome, of course, so please post a comment if there's anything you want to share.

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Topics: lms, employee training, e learning tools, corporate learning, learning management system, learning management, training development

At Ziiva, we offer more than a comprehensive, tailor-fit Learning Management System. We are always seeking ways to enrich your company culture and improve the online learning experience that you offer to your students, employees, customers, or users.