This is an old saying that is highly relevant to talent retention: “You only get one chance to make a great first impression.”

That is why new-hire onboarding is so important. Onboarding is an employer’s first — and best — chance to connect with new employees in a positive way.

Unfortunately, most organizations are bad at it. A Gallup study found only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job of onboarding new hires. Brandon Hall Group research shows that 9% of employers rank onboarding as excellent. And 56% are in the early stages of developing onboarding or have no formal process in place.

Schoox, a Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Preferred Provider, believes onboarding is perhaps the most important step in retaining talent. Their onboarding solutions make it easier for employers to effectively train employees as soon as they arrive so they can quickly contribute. They’ll also feel ready to do so. This is especially critical in high-turnover, front-line-focused work environments like restaurants, retail and manufacturing. In these verticals, new hires often need to be trained quickly on almost every aspect of their job.

Some companies focus onboarding on initiating new hires to the culture and treat skills training as a separate process. In reality, learning should be the driver of teaching new employees about the culture and at the same time preparing them for success.

Brandon Hall research shows that many organizations are using the following learning approaches during onboarding:

• Experiential learning (81%)
• Formal in-person instructor-led classes (72%)
• Peer-to-peer learning (70%)
• Microlearning (62%)
• Goal setting (61%)
• Coaching/mentoring (48%)
• Assessments (47%)

Many research studies show that the biggest driver of talent retention is creating great employee experiences. That process starts with onboarding. You can make a great first impression or struggle continuously to change a bad one.

If you are one of the many organizations looking to reimagine onboarding, I’ll leave you with a few critical questions to consider:

• Is your onboarding a standalone training event or a sustained journey to proficiency with ongoing support and reinforcement?
• Does your onboarding deliver the message that the organization cares about employees’ skills and career development and will support them in their learning journey?
• Is your onboarding scalable?
• Are you able to capture enough data to assess the impact of onboarding both on individuals and the organization?
• Does your onboarding approach help new hires build a social network of mentors and co-workers?

Watch Schoox’s onDemand webinar “People-First Employee Onboarding” at eLearning Industry.com to learn more!

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Right now, organizations are looking to get a handle on how they are going to engage and develop their people moving forward. Companies realize they need to reskill and upskill their employees in a much more fluid and agile way. Additionally, companies that made a hasty digital transformation of their learning technology environment in the immediate wake of the pandemic are starting to realize the choices they made may not have been ideal. Put this all together and it makes for an increased interest in reshaping the learning technology ecosystem to better suit this new environment.

But changing technologies can be a daunting task. So much so that many organizations would rather limp along with what they have than risk a switch. But by conducting proper due diligence and asking themselves the right questions, companies can simplify the process and ensure their next technology selection puts them in a position to meet the future needs of the business.

9 Due Diligence Steps to Better Prepare for a Learning Technology Transformation

Think you’re ready? Why not find out with our 12-question infographic…

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Ask just about anyone today to name one thing they learned within the past week and where they learned it, and they’re likely to tell you about a video they watched on YouTube or Tiktok. In our modern digital age, it’s difficult to have a conversation about learning without considering the vastness of the Internet and how it’s shaped learner expectations around workplace training.

In light of all this, there has been a lot of talk about the concept of “learning experience platforms” (LXPs) in recent years. Many Learning and Development (L&D) leaders now seek learning platforms that not only help them deliver training across their enterprises, but also engage their employees through more interactive features and dynamic content suggestions.

Problems arise, however, when an LXP alone is unable to meet an organization’s core learning requirements. Over the years, this led some L&D professionals to implement two platforms for their organizations—both an LXP and a learning management system (LMS). This also proved to be tedious and costly though, and caused many challenges for organizations.

A common difference between an LMS and an LXP is that an LMS is primarily built to distribute training content and often emphasizes course administration, learning program management and compliance, while an LXP focuses more on the learner experience through features like sophisticated content delivery, skills mapping, and personalized career paths.

What sets us apart here at Schoox is that we created our platform with a focus on learners first, as well as an aspiration to build engaging learning experiences that complement and enhance the vital functionalities of an LMS.

Today, Schoox empowers some of the world’s largest enterprises to deliver the training their employees need to succeed, in nearly any language and on any device—and take learning and development to the next level with many of the core functionalities of an LXP embedded right into our award-winning platform.

To further enhance the LXP functionalities of Schoox, we’re thrilled to introduce pre-populated external content channels as a quick and easy way for L&D leaders to share free content resources from YouTube directly within the platform. With just a few clicks, admins or learning managers can opt to make these curated video playlists available to all or select groups of learners.

Some of the best learning resources out there today are easily accessible on the web by anyone with a broadband internet connection. Sites like YouTube democratized learning, and not only is democracy a value we take seriously here in Greece—it’s one we invented. From day one, we designed Schoox to be the best LMS to help businesses of all sizes democratize learning across their entire organizations and give their people the power to drive their own learning journeys forward.

On behalf of everyone here at Schoox, I invite you to follow along here on our blog as we continue on our path toward making learning more rewarding and fun for all.

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Today everyone expects the same level of personalized, responsive service with everything they do—including their learning experiences. Fulfilling the need for smarter learning technology in business setting, however, is often considered “easier said than done.” That’s where learning experience platforms (LXPs) enter the picture. 

LXPs are considered the most exciting development in employee learning—and, as a result, are on a fast track to greater popularity among corporations, extended enterprises, and franchise businesses in the next decade. Interest in and demand for LXPs accelerated in 2019, according to Gartner. The LXP market in 2020 was approximately over $508.5 million. The market is expected to surge at a CAGR of 25.3% according to the recent research report.

LXPs are different from learning management systems (LMS.) While an LMS focuses on course administration, learner assessment, and tracking learners’ activities with reports, the purpose of an LXP is to deliver the components of a personalized learner experience through social, collaborative, mobile, and microlearning tools. The systems often utilize machine learning to assess employees’ skills and recommend content.

LXPs are a front-end layer that typically resides on top of an LMS. They integrate with existing internal and external “trusted sources” of knowledge and learning, including LMS and corporate HR systems to present learners with a holistic learning experience. An LXP puts learners at the center of their own professional education experience by tailoring suggestions to their preferences and personalizing all aspects of learning. They also enable L&D teams to be leaner, more agile, and more strategic.

But what if you want both LMS and LXP capabilities in one platform? This is a great question and an ideal goal. One option is to overlay LXP functionality on top of an LMS. This isn’t ideal, however, because there is a fundamental lack of integration between the applications, which means that employees must log into two systems to access the functionality—an outcome they won’t appreciate.

Schoox Delivers Built In LXP Tools

An ideal learning system should deliver the best of both worlds—both administering the L&D program and creating exceptional experiences for learners. Schoox brings the two sides of learning and development together in one platform, thereby, creating a single seamless user experience. 

Here’s a quick look at the capabilities of each and the result from the perfect union of the two. 

Organizations that have already deployed a blended LMS-LXP system are able to easily execute effective employee learning programs that are more experiential and immediate, and that target content for delivery when and where it’s needed. 

These dual-focused learning applications are checking all the boxes of a modern employer learning program—including social, collaborative, mobile, and microlearning. Checkers & Rally’s is a perfect example. 

Checkers & Rally’s Fun, Engaging, and Mobile Microlearning

Checkers & Rally’s learned that teaching the tricks of the trade to its 11,000-strong team members doesn’t always require long lessons. Instead, to learn how to “serve up the perfect fry,” for example, workers simply watch a fun, short video demo on their phones or one of each store’s two iPads. Then they immediately put the new knowledge to work during their shifts. This has made learning more immediate and experiential—and, as a result, more effective. 

The “short video blasts are incredibly popular with our staff,” said Krishawna Henderson, the QSR’s Director of Diversity & Learning Development and manager of its innovative “Crazy Good Learning” program. “The number of employees logging onto the learning platform has doubled year over year, and team members are eager to put into practice what they’ve just learned.”

Learn more about Checkers & Rally’s success and the power of Schoox to support learning programs for front-line workers in our new report, Real-world Learning for Frontline Workers: Top 5 Learning & Development Must-haves for Employees Working on the Go.

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According to a report from EY on the ever-growing importance of L&D on the future of work, “data can be a game changer within the functioning of corporate L&D and help the function earn their spot as a strategic partner.” 

Industry analyst Josh Bersin also speaks to the importance of reporting in L&D. In a research paper from 2020 on adaptive learning, Josh states “the depth and ability to continually assess, learn, and act changes the game for how learning departments will operate and make investment decisions. It allows the organization to make faster, better, and more effective decisions.”

If your company has a learning and development program in place, you’ll likely want to gauge the results of training efforts periodically or on an ongoing basis. Without the right data, it can be difficult or even impossible to determine if your company’s approach to learning and development is working. Robust reporting within a learning platform empowers L&D teams to gather data about things that truly matter to the business, such as how training improves performance and productivity. 

Here are some ways L&D teams can leverage reports:

Track Progress 

Reports help L&D teams automatically keep track of which employees have completed training, performance, and progress toward business objectives—and instantly access that information whenever needed. Admins and managers can create reports to track  status, performance, scores, registrations, results, and more for specific employees, groups of employees, or across the entire organization. 

Demonstrate Why Learning Matters 

Utilized correctly, reports can help L&D professionals illustrate why learning and development matters and optimize training across the board. A learning platform with robust reporting capabilities can help you uncover deeper analysis about your training efforts which truly matter to your business. 

If you’ll be sharing insights about your company’s training programs with HR, finance, sales, or other executives and stakeholders, you’ll want to provide meaningful data and metrics that showcase the value of your L&D efforts. For this level of analysis, a simple look into course completion rates likely won’t suffice—you’ll also want to share information about how training improved specific skill sets among employees, boosted operations, and impacted the bottom line. 

Improve L&D Strategy 

Reports about learning and development programs can help businesses identify what’s working and what isn’t, then adjust training programs to be more effective. For example, data might show that despite completing multiple hours of training on a particular topic, employees still fall short on certain required skills when observed. This might prompt an L&D team to consider how the training is delivered (live, in-person instruction or virtual courses) and the format of specific resources (perhaps videos would work better than written documents to demonstrate certain processes)—and make the necessary adjustments. 

The Schoox Difference 

The right learning platform will make it easy for L&D professionals to pull data about specific individuals, as well as at the team or organizational level. Without a built-in reporting function, some L&D teams resort to manual tracking or exporting user data into another tool to analyze results. This process is both time consuming and less effective than having the information consolidated and readily available within the platform itself. 

Some reports you can create in Schoox include the courses report, in-class training report, and members report. 

With Schoox, you can easily leverage pre-built reports or customize them to generate a consolidated view of information about courses or curricula, scores or training results, individual users, various groups of users, content, and more. Reports can be exported or set up as recurring, scheduled in advance, or created on an ad-hoc basis. Schoox seamlessly integrates with leading HRIS and other HR software platforms, so pertinent data about your users always remains in sync with the learning and performance metrics  gathered by Schoox. 

Some L&D professionals struggle with reports because their company’s learning platforms aren’t flexible enough to change how users, or different groups of users, are associated with one another. This leads to inaccurate or incomplete data which isn’t necessarily useful. Schoox can be configured to reflect the unique organizational structure of any business, and user permissions can be adjusted to ensure the right people have access to the information they need — which makes reporting much more effective overall.  

A regional training manager, for example, might need to access reports detailing which users are enrolled in which courses across multiple franchise locations while another may only need information about a specific group of learners. With Schoox, L&D teams can easily customize user permissions, compare metrics across different groups, and segment data in a way that makes sense for specific business units. 

What’s New in Q2 2022?

We recently simplified reporting in Schoox by migrating all reports — both scheduled and standalone — into Report Builder. Now admins and managers can access current and archived reports, as well as options to create new ones, all in one place. We also improved the backend engine that powers reports, making the function more efficient overall.

Admins and managers now have access to all recurring, scheduled, and ad-hoc reports in Report Builder.

Learn more about all the updates we made to the Schoox platform this quarter here. 

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Having the ability to configure your learning program’s organizational structure to match your business structure helps businesses overcome some of their leading learning program challenges. A recent survey by Brandon Hall Group found that today’s franchise businesses are facing significant learning program challenges, including: 

• 88% said technology capabilities are a medium or high factor in franchisee training effectiveness
• 62% said they experience difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of their learning programs
• 42% said they lack the right technology to run effective learning programs 

Franchise business models represent just one example of how unique organizational needs become hurdles standing in the way of effective learning. SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, provides a toolkit that explains the full spectrum of organizational structures:

• Vertical structures where work and employees are organized by specialization, usually departments

• Matrix structures where work and employees are organized by specialization and by division, usually product, service, customer, or geography

• Open boundary or network structures where work and employees are organized beyond traditional boundaries into groups and teams that can include third parties such as partners, suppliers, and outsourcers

With this variety in organizational structures, why do most learning management systems take a one-size-fits-all approach? 

Build Your LMS Org Structure Your Way 

While other learning platforms are built exclusively for vertical organizational design, Schoox uses a flexible hierarchy model that makes it possible to support any organizational structure. This means L&D leaders can get creative with representing the nuanced, matrixed ways that people are connected and need to collaborate across your enterprise. L&D can then impact all types of training and talent initiatives including company-wide communication, learning and content sharing, performance reviews, and much more.

Schoox hierarchies make it possible to organize learning programs on a granular level. Here are some examples:

• Businesses: Corporate, brands, franchise operators, regions
• Departments: Functional and divisional
• Jobs: Roles and responsibilities
• Geographies: City, metro area, state, country

Here are some examples from different industries to show how to organize learning for different types of organizational structures using Schoox:

Software (vertical): A software company with a vertical organization where an employee (software developer) reports to a function (engineering). Using Schoox, the software company would be the primary hierarchy, with a grouping to support the one-to-one relationship between the software developer and the engineering function. 

Construction (matrix): A construction company with a matrixed organization where an employee (a project manager) reports to both a function (project management office) and a division (energy). Using Schoox, the construction company would be the primary hierarchy, with groups to support one-to-one relationships between the project manager and each of the departments: the project management office and the energy division. 

Manufacturing (open boundary): A beverage manufacturing company with an open boundary structure where an employee (plant manager) works for a partner or subsidiary (independent bottling plant). With Schoox, the beverage manufacturing company would be the primary hierarchy, with a group that connects the plant manager to the independent bottling plant. 

In this model, the manufacturer has the option to create distinct groups for each of its bottling plant partners. And within these groups, the partners would be able to create their own custom learning programs for their direct employees (e.g., the plant manager, their teams, and the individuals who work at the plant.) This approach is commonly used in franchise businesses such as restaurants and hotels.

Once the organizational structure is in place, simple filters make it easy to send targeted communications, automate learning assignments, report on progress, and provide the right information to the right employees at the right time.    

Schoox in Action—Subway’s Global Franchise Structure

A perfect example of the flexibility of the Schoox hierarchy tools is Subway® Sandwich Restaurants. The organizational structure of the global chain’s 44,500-plus restaurants in 110 countries around the world consists of a variety of relationship types between the corporate offices, franchisors, and franchisees. 

The company’s previous LMS was designed for a vertical organization, so it fell short of its real-world learning program needs. As a result, the restaurant chain struggled to serve the learning demands of its teams, managers, and employees. 

With Schoox, the University of Subway is now structured to model the company’s complex organization structure. Every restaurant, manager, and franchisee can use the platform in the way that works best for them. The flexible hierarchical tools empower the company to deliver a more robust learning program around the world.

Learn More

Learn more about Subway’s success and the power of Schoox to support learning programs for front-line workers in our new light paper, The Top 5 Capabilities of Learning and Development for Frontline Workers.   https://employee-learning-on-the-move.schoox.com/

Want to understand how to organize learning using Schoox hierarchies? Check out our eBook, Expand Your Organization’s Learning Connections, Relationships, and Collaboration. https://learn.schoox.com/ebook-organizational-structures

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Clarity for Goals Management 

Many businesses utilize goals in Schoox to rally individuals or teams toward common objectives. Goals can be quantitative, such as sales targets or other numeric quotas; or more qualitative, like “increasing customer satisfaction.” 

Goals are often integral to an employee’s learning and development journey in Schoox, but they may be left abandoned for a number of reasons—like changes to job responsibilities, evolving business needs, or time constraints. We updated how goals are labeled and displayed for more clarity between different goal stages and a better overall user experience. Here’s a rundown of how goals will be labeled within Schoox at various levels of progress:

• Goals with 100% Progress Completed  → Now automatically marked “Completed” 
• Currently labeled “Archived” → Now show a “Completed” status
• Abandoned Goals → Can now be manually set to “Archived” 

Goals previously marked “100% Progress Completed” now are automatically marked as “Completed.”

We also added the ability to select “global settings” on goals to determine the default behavior for all goals, which can either be set for an individual as they move throughout the organization or be applied to all individuals within an organization or sub-unit which hold a particular job or role. This new option can be found in Advanced Settings. 

Higher Quality Feedback on Performance Reviews 

Companies often introduce a calibration stage in performance reviews as a checkpoint to ensure feedback is fair, free of bias, and constructive. Since companies may tie annual compensation increases and bonuses to performance reviews, this step serves as quality control to ensure equitable practices. 

We enhanced workflows in Schoox to allow organizations to implement this crucial step in their performance review processes. Implementing a calibration step enables senior-level management to review feedback and adjust scoring prior to delivering the feedback to an employee and completing the performance review process. 

Administrators may now also tailor the rating scale with behaviorally anchored ratings level descriptions associated with specific performance areas. This helps reviewers provide more consistent ratings that align to organizational expectations and avoid potential misinterpretations or bias of general descriptions. 

Admins and managers can customize ratings scales with behaviorally anchored descriptions.

Streamlined Reporting 

With Schoox Report Builder, customers can easily leverage one of our 110 pre-built reports or customize the fields to create custom reports and access critical information about courses or curricula, scores or training results, individual users, various groups of users, content, and more. With Schoox, L&D teams can easily customize user permissions, compare metrics across different groups, and segment data in a way that makes sense for specific business units. Reports can be recurring, scheduled in advance, or created on an ad-hoc basis.

This quarter, we consolidated scheduled reports and basic reporting functionality into Report Builder so that it’s the “one-stop-shop” reporting area of the Schoox platform. Here L&D professionals, admins, and managers will now find all currently scheduled and new reports, as well as options to run ad-hoc reports. We also improved the backend engine that powers reports, making the function more efficient overall, and introduced a number of smaller enhancements to improve flows and user experiences. 

A view of Report Builder in Schoox.

Microsoft Teams Integration for Live Sessions

Schoox is now integrated with Microsoft Teams. Admins and managers who conduct virtual events via Schoox via may now launch and track events through their Teams accounts. This allows for a better user experience and eliminates any learning curves for users who are familiar with the Microsoft Teams platform. 

Biometric Login on the Schoox Mobile App 

For an additional layer of security when accessing their Schoox account, users can now log into the Schoox mobile app using biometric authentication on any compatible iOS or Android devices. For example, a user might choose to use a fingerprint or face recognition scan rather than typing in their password to log into Schoox on their phones or other mobile devices. 

Schoox is designed for how humans actually learn. We’re always enhancing our platform so organizations and their  employees can get the most value from their knowledge bases to get more done. 

Discover how Schoox can meet your learning needs, schedule a demo!

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Why Provide Employees On-the-Job Training?

On-the-job training (OJT) is an essential part of learning and development for many businesses. Let’s look at some reasons why it’s so important.

Optimize Frontline Workforce Performance

A common adage in the business world is that your customer is always right. Optimizing frontline workforce performance can help your business improve customer service and ultimately improve your bottom line.

Whether it’s a restaurant, hotel, retailer, or other consumer-facing business, unfavorable customer feedback usually means your employees aren’t performing well on the frontlines. While isolated incidents of poor customer service might be part of the issue, a general pattern of bad reviews indicates a larger systemic failure on the part of the business—not its employees. These kinds of problems can often be traced to inadequate training.

OJT helps businesses ensure their frontline workforces master the skills critical to success—at both an individual and organizational level. It enables learning and development (L&D) professionals to connect specific skill sets to key business activities and goals, allowing them to design training programs that teach their employees the skills required to truly excel at their jobs. This might mean showing hotel housekeeping staff how to fold towels or prepare rooms in a particular way and observing each employee to confirm knowledge retention, or discreetly observing employees on the sales floor after training to gauge how they interact with customers.

Hands-On Experience

Failure is good for learning. OJT gives employees the opportunity to learn, correct mistakes and enhance skills in a pressure-free environment, providing them with much needed practice before they hit the frontlines or go out in the field. Even for non-customer facing jobs, OJT allows employees to hone their skills before they’re put to the test. Physically performing job tasks also helps employees feel more connected to their work.

Ensure Knowledge Retention

Training is only effective if managers can ensure their staff can perform the jobs that need to be done. OJT is one of the best ways for training managers to confirm their employees learned the tasks and skills covered in training. By observing their performance, training managers can determine whether employees are ready for the frontlines or need more help before taking on the job. They can then provide the necessary additional training to help employees strengthen any weak spots and feel confident in their ability to complete critical tasks. With mobile accessibility, training managers can even quietly monitor employee performance where it matters most—in front of customers.

The Schoox Difference

Businesses often rely on paper scorecards and manual methods to track OJT training compliance, but this method is cumbersome to maintain, makes it difficult to share data with other systems and to report on at scale. Other training tools often focus on simple forms and observation checklists that may not provide enough flexibility to design training in a way that’s efficient and ideal for a digital workplace. Schoox goes above and beyond observation checklists to encourage effective learning via on-the-job training. Schoox offers training managers and L&D professionals the option to create course-connected OJT tasks, which are part of a larger course or curriculum, or standalone OJT tasks that are independent from any other ongoing training programs.

As an example, a course or curriculum-connected OJT task could be used to observe employees prepare different foods after they watch digital content teaching them about each menu item.

A standalone OJT task might be used to observe an employee prepare a new menu item that wasn’t covered in the original course. They can be used to provide supplemental or ad-hoc training whenever required.

Once learners have completed their assigned OJT tasks, training managers can access an at-a-glance view of progress across the board. Training managers can use this information to determine who on their team is excelling, who needs more support, and what kind of additional supervision might be needed for particular team members.

What’s New?

We recently made several enhancements to OJT functionality within Schoox. Admins and training managers may now elect to re-use previously created standalone OJT tasks as part of a course or curriculum. In the example above, this means the training managers would be able to pull the standalone OJT task created for a new menu item into the existing course or curriculum.

We also added a new homepage widget that allows trainees to quickly sign off on OJT tasks, providing a better user experience. Finally, we added a new report for both standalone and course-connected OJT tasks that displays learner progress for each. This provides L&D professionals with critical insight into how employees are performing, which can be applied to improve the design of future OJT tasks.

On-the-job training is the best way for many employers to teach and assess mission-critical skills. It helps employees build the confidence they need to be successful in their roles. When done right, it translates into greater operational efficiency, exceptional customer service, repeat customers, and increased revenues for businesses.

Chat with one of our Solution Consultants to learn more about the many flexible options to create OJT initiatives in Schoox.

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As the importance of talent development increases in today’s workplaces, companies need learning programs that can adapt to the needs of evolving business structures, personnel changes, and complex relationships.

To achieve this, companies should focus on the backbone of their learning management system (LMS). The “backbone” of an LMS is based on a company’s organizational structure and is also known as a “hierarchy.” 

The future demands flexibility and innovation

Over the past several decades, the business world has been slowly replacing traditional top-down management hierarchies with more decentralized, flexible “networks.” 

These new forms of business organization are based on several changes impacting today’s workforce. For example, changes with digitization, flexible work schedules, demographics and worker expectations, the demand for autonomy, decentralized decision making, and measurement by objectives and key results (OKRs) instead of key performance indicators (KPIs).

Learning technologies have also been impacted by these changes. In fact, the monumental changes that the business world and workforce faced over the past year and a half have catapulted LMSs into the spotlight. Learning solutions are now a critical “must have” for today’s workplaces. 

However, many of the learning systems available make it harder, not easier, for companies to configure their system to adapt to evolving business challenges, and provide flexible and innovative learning opportunities to their employees. 

Clearly, organizations need a more modern learning solution with capabilities that allow them to easily define their unique organizational structure within their LMS, and be able to adjust it quickly when there are inevitable changes to your business needs. 

Most LMS platforms are built around an outdated organizational structures

No two organizational structures are alike. In the past, most businesses operated in a traditional pyramid organizational structure. But today, business structures are not always so linear. 

Modern organizational structures are complex and networked at multiple levels. They include non-linear relationships between business units. For example:

• More than one retail concept or brands
• A mix of franchisee- and corporate-owned stores
• Locations in multiple countries
• A mix of partnerships

This complexity presents a real challenge for most  LMS platforms  because most still only support the 50-year-old pyramid-style organizational structure.

Thus, if your unique business structure doesn’t fit this “box,” you risk having to spend excessive amounts of time and money creating workarounds, resulting in a wide range of business limitations and missed opportunities. 

In the end, all of these challenges mean one thing: Your LMS doesn’t work for your unique organizational structure. And because of this, your learning programs suffer.  

LMS hierarchies should be designed for the new world of work

In today’s organizational structures, your learning platform, and the LMS hierarchy informing it, should do three things:

1. Empower employees
2. Streamline management
3. Be adaptable and flexible to change

Currently, most LMSs only support  person-to-person relationships . But an LMS hierarchy suited for modern organizational structures should support person-to-person, organization unit-to-person, and person-to-organization unit relationships .  

This opens up the opportunity for hyper-focused levels of communication, learning content, information sharing, reporting, and much more.

For example, an individual employee at a franchise restaurant store may need to be connected at the same time to the franchise location, a multi-unit owner office, a regional group, a territory, or country. The regional manager for that franchise group may only want to send targeted communications or assign learning to all the stores in one city, but they should easily have access to personnel data, training results, and communications of their entire region.

The impact of an LMS hierarchy for modern organizational structures

An LMS hierarchy impacts the efficiency  of every function within the learning system. To that end, a modern LMS hierarchy affords organizations many more possibilities and pathways for success with their learning programs. 

For example:

• Permissions. You can target content and course sharing to employees with precision, or create custom job permissions instead of relying on the LMS predefined roles.
• Approvals. You can give employees control over their learning experience—and keep the right governance in place—to build greater work satisfaction.
• Learning assignments and content. You can assign courses, curricula, and events more quickly to an entire cross-functional group versus person by person, or relying only on obvious business groupings, like department or job role.
• Communication and social collaboration. You can target employee engagement by regions, areas, and groups for better team building.
• Performance and goals. You can define relationships to drive a more proactive employee review and approval process.
• Reporting. You can choose exactly which data you will share with whom across the organization.

Summary

If you plan to purchase or upgrade your LMS, remember to take the hierarchy component of the system into account. Make sure it can support today’s demands as well as your organization’s unique and ever-evolving needs.

Schoox is the only learning solution provider that supports how your employees work today, how your managers need to manage, delivers flexibility as you grow and change, and provides actionable, data-driven insights to support your success.

See how simplifying the complex sets you up for long-term success…

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What kind of system would you need to develop each frontline employee according to their individual skills, knowledge, and experience to help them continuously grow? How would you keep them engaged, informed, and compliant? 

This can pose a challenge for learning and development teams at large, global businesses. Especially when they’re responsible for leading and managing such an undertaking.

Global businesses have complex structures that require a learning solution that is equipped to handle their unique set of needs. For example, communicating information to various levels. They may need to reach a single employee, a specific business unit, or every employee in every division. Or, they may want to deliver personalized training to both frontline and other employees, across multiple regions and cultures. 

If you are in the market for a learning solution and you have a complex organizational structure with specific talent development needs, be on the lookout for these must-haves.

Global businesses with complex organizational structures should look for a learning solution that:

1. Simplifies global learning initiatives

First, the platform should be easy to access across the entire company and on all devices. A good question to ask a learning solution provider is how much down time their cloud-based system experiences annually. Additionally, ask if their solution is optimized for PCs, cell phones, and tablets.

Second, the platform should be able to translate learning content and the user interface text to many languages. This enables employees to choose their default language.

Geotargeting comes into play here as well. By having a learning solution with geotargeting capabilities, the system can prompt the employee to choose the language depending on where they’re located. Or, it can automatically reset to the default language if needed.

Finally, the system should allow you to measure learning adoption rates. It should also enable you to create reports for specific regions and geographies throughout your company.

Consider an L&D leader of a large restaurant franchise. To determine the completion rates for one of their key training courses on salad prepping, they run a report. Upon review, they realize that the rates vary greatly across geographic locations.

By leveraging a reporting tool that drills down to various levels, including by region, they can immediately address the issue. For example, they can leverage the system’s built-in communication tools to share information. Or, they can employ gaming elements to build friendly competition and boost completion rates.

2. Helps drive engagement across the entire workforce

Global organizations have many factors to consider when it comes to employee engagement beyond the number of employees. They also have to take into account what motivates employees across different regions and cultures. Therefore, global organizations need learning solutions with a robust set of tools that can help them drive engagement. For example:

• Surveys
• Communication and feedback mechanisms (groups, one-to-one, or one-to-many messaging)
• Progress tracking in order to regularly review and iterate programs
• Learning tailored by role or need
• Relevant, interactive content
  

3. Eases companywide change

From shifting to virtual and blended learning due to the pandemic, to implementing new policies, procedures, or programs, learning solutions can help large complex organizations manage large-scale change more easily.

Continuing with the previous example, consider how COVID-19 affected the way large restaurant franchises conducted franchisee training. Typically, franchisees would visit corporate headquarters for training. The pandemic forced restaurants to change that. Learning solutions equipped to handle that change were able to shine during the pandemic. Why? Because they helped many companies transition to a virtual learning environment. 

Large businesses were able to take things that could be done online and create virtual training, both instructor-led and self-paced. And for those unable to attend, employers simply enrolled them in the recorded on-demand training instead.

Mobile optimization was also key during the pandemic. Companies were able to leverage technology to make learning available in the flow of work. For example, a restaurant employee could pick up their phone to view a microlearning session. Minutes later, they can wash their and get right back to work to apply what they learned. 

4. Comes with a reputation for excellent customer service and product improvement

Finally, look for learning solution providers that are known to be “customer-obsessed.” Your relationship should feel like a true partnership, including having access to leadership. 

Companies grow and change over time, and you deserve a learning provider whose success depends upon your own success. They should be there for you as you grow to monitor your needs. And they should improve their product and features to address those needs along the way. 

A chat with Subway

Subway, a global business with more than 40,000 locations, spoke with us to share the impact Schoox has had on their organization over the years. Subway’s VP of Global L&D and Operating Systems Sunil Sudhakar discusses the successes and lessons learned during their training and development journey as a complex global business.

Watch on demand to learn more: Driving Engagement at Scale: A Fireside Chat with Subway

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