Learning Solutions Archives - Schoox - A Learning Management System

Thinking Through Your Next Evolution in Learning Technology

Schoox — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0000

The last three years have been quite an adjustment period for most organizations. The business climate is dynamic and unpredictable, more workers are remote than ever before, and keeping good talent engaged and committed to the company has gotten more challenging.

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

1. Business Goals

It seems like it would be a given, but many Learning & Development teams aren’t exactly clear on what the goals of the business really are, let alone how leadership expects to achieve them. Having proper discussions with stakeholders can help crystalize L&D’s mission in service of these goals, which then guides technology selection with the goals in mind.

Questions to ask:
– What are the organizational business goals?
– How can L&D have an impact on them?
– Do we have the right metrics and tools to be able to measure that impact?

2. Use Cases

Figuring out what exactly you need the learning technology to do is critical. This is not a list of features and functionalities. This is an understanding of what the platform will do for the specific learners, managers, admins, and other stakeholders in the organization. It’s understanding how the technology helps make these specific things happen.

Questions to ask:
– Who are the different learner, manager, and admin groups?
– What does each need to do in the system?
– Are there any flows or steps that need to happen for the above? (ex: using SSO to log in)

3. Stakeholder Buy-in

Learning technology should be selected to help achieve business goals, so having stakeholder sponsors or champions on your side is critical. If they know how this technology will help their people and the business succeed, they will support you.

Questions to ask:
– Which groups with this technology touch? (ex: IT)
– What do they need to know about the technology?
– When does it make sense to get them involved and how much?

4. Digital Culture

You have to know your audience. Simply buying the newest or shiniest tech won’t help if nobody can or wants to use it. The solution you buy should match the technology awareness of the audience, or maybe slightly ahead (keep an eye on the future!). Long, intense training on a new system will push engagement in the wrong direction.

Questions to ask:
– What is the technology readiness of the intended audiences?
– Is there a way to build learning into the systems we use today?
– Would adding a new technology be disruptive?

5. Data Security

Make sure you understand all of the implications of a new system. What kind of data will be required? Does the organization need to adhere to any regulations like GDPR? Are there any intellectual property or proprietary information issues to address? Your technology selection needs to be able to handle these situations if necessary.

Questions to ask:
– Are there security and compliance regulations we need to adhere to?
– Do we have access to someone who can help us update our technology to meet new security requirements and regulations?

6. IT

In some cases, IT gets left out of the conversation until implementation day, which leads to disaster. IT counts as one of your business stakeholders. They can help identify possible challenges with networks, security, and integrations early enough in the process to help guide the selection process.

Questions to ask:
– Which IT stakeholders need to be involved?
– What IT requirements or questions do we need to be aware of?
– Is our technology infrastructure conducive to setting up a new learning system?

7. Governance

At this point of the due diligence process, you need to figure out who is going to own what. If you are going to have multiple roles with various layers of permissions/access, the solution needs to be able to provide that. The technology you select should be able to match the way your organization is structured, even if that is expected to evolve over time.

Questions to ask:
– Who will own the implementation and administration of the technology?
– Who will oversee communicating any changes that impact learning and what might those changes be? Ex: regulatory compliance updates.
– Who owns user updates and changes?

8. Flexibility

Setting a learning strategy in stone and never revisiting it is a sure way to ensure L&D fails the business. The business is acting and reacting constantly with minor and major shifts in strategy coming more than once a year. As such, a static L&D strategy won’t point to the right technology solution. Make sure the L&D strategy is in alignment with the business, and the technologies leveraged can aid that agility.

Questions to ask:
– Do we have plans to grow as an organization and can the technology scale with us?
– Do we plan to extend our learning into new areas or modalities?
– How often do we plan to revisit our learning strategy?

9. Current State

What do we currently have at our disposal from a learning technology and learning content perspective? Having a clear picture of the technology ecosystem as far as what is there, what works, and what doesn’t can help narrow the selection process. This is also a good time to review any content libraries for duplicate and outdated material.

Questions to ask:
– What’s working well and what isn’t working well enough with our current learning system(s)?
– Is it time for a content refresh?
– Are there holes that exist in the current learning technology management or related processes?

There are other questions to ask, for sure, but this list can set your organization on the right technology selection path. Without a proper foundation, the process leaves you to the whims and vagaries of an incredibly crowded and complex technology market. In the end, you are not buying a technology, but rather finding a partner that can help you solve challenges and deliver on business goals.

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

The post Thinking Through Your Next Evolution in Learning Technology appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.

Why LMS Hierarchies Should Be Designed for Today’s Organizational Structures

Schoox — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 17:55:43 +0000

Today’s organizational structures—and work environments—are vastly different than what they were decades ago.

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:

Empower employees
Streamline management
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…

The post Why LMS Hierarchies Should Be Designed for Today’s Organizational Structures appeared first on Schoox - A Learning Management System.