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How a great LMS helps managers engage with team training

Blog posts | 23.06.2020

Dan Muller

Content Marketing Manager at Kineo US

A reliable and modern LMS can benefit all areas of your organization, especially managers looking to gain deeper insight into their team’s individual learning and development journeys. Many times we fall into the all-too-familiar trap of viewing an LMS as a system that hosts and enables elearning courses. While that is a key function of an LMS, it is also the bare minimum your platform should be doing for your business. Whether you are launching a new system from scratch or making improvements to your current LMS, a great Learning Management System will place a strong focus on manager engagement and visibility. This blog will cover five key areas managers can use in a fully-optimised LMS solution

Manager dashboards

While this may seem like a very basic example, clear and easily-to-understand dashboards provide important learning visibility for managers. Customisable dashboards give your managers at a glance access to the stats they need to check team progress through training, understand skills gaps and pick up on areas of improvement. For example, Totara implementations through Kineo offer a wide range of customisable visualisations based on business area, job title, team, and more. We work with our LMS clients to establish dashboards that makes sense for their goals and ensure leaders have all the appropriate info available to them without clutter.

Trackable learning journeys

As organization structure and job titles are established within an LMS, managers can then track learner journeys that are completely relative to their specific areas. This means tracking course completions on a team level and gaining better understanding of growth areas. Managers can also timeline long-term goals and create accountability steps to keep those development targets on track. Plus, all of this is documented in same platform where all of the learning takes place. A single source of truth for all of your learning and development information that can also integrate with your HRIS.

Collaboration on learning plans

Learner journeys are easily tracked within a modern LMS because they’re created there. Managers know development goals will vary among different team members, so using the LMS to define and agree on learning journeys and goals makes sense. That’s why a strong LMS solution allows you to build out unique learning plans with input from both the manager and the end user. All parties should ideally have functionality to provide feedback and refine their learning objectives over time, in addition to tracking progress.

Address performance concerns early

Just as tracking goals establishes a long-term learning plan, it can also help managers be proactive about recognising performance concerns and alerting them to areas of improvement. Identifying red flags early can help managers course correct or reevaluate learning plans before morale drops beyond repair. The LMS tracking abilities also help managers get granular about improvement areas and target the exact learning needs that require the most attention. Managers may also notice commonalities in learning concerns among different team members, which can help them uncover collaborative solutions.

Create unique learning content

Employees often look to managers to be thought leaders in their respective areas. A great LMS will allow managers to share knowledge and collaborate on learning materials in a social way. Just as social networks have become a part of our day-to-day lives, LMS environments also allow for interactive content creation, complete with likes and comments that allow users to share ideas and feedback in an informal way. As ideas are shared, new learning initiatives can grow right within the platform.    

These are just some of the key areas where having a strong LMS can enable better manager operations and practices. Specific needs will vary based on the goals of an organization, but establishing a platform for creating and tracking learning plans is critical. From there, the sky is the limit as managers target specific development areas and grow their learning content libraries. But it all starts with a quality LMS.  

A free LMS resource

If you'd like to learn more about implementing a state of the art LMS in your organization, we invite you to download our free guide for some leading best practices. Kineo consults brands across nearly all industries to help them make the best long-term learning decisions.    

Dan Muller

Content Marketing Manager at Kineo US


Dan Muller is the Content Marketing Manager at Kineo US and will occasionally post his thoughts around custom elearning content and digital trends on the Kineo blog. He's not an expert, but he is a life-long learner, which seems relevant.