Many training managers assume that LMS products designed for HR learning can address practically everything their organization needs. And that may be true if the requirements consist of employee onboarding, diversity training, succession planning, and other traditional corporate processes and procedures.
The reality, however, tells another story.
We find that organizations training their people on a specific set of skills often realize that a variety of LMS products rooted in HR won’t likely be up to the task at hand. This can cause a dilemma for training managers once they realize that a much different beast is required for training: A skills-based LMS solution.
As you distinguish the unique differences between HR-based training and skills-based training, a variety of advantages on the skills-based side emerge. Let’s explore these benefits together so you can be sure you’re making a wise decision for your organization.
Understanding Major LMS Differences: From HR to Skills-Based Training
Envision yourself gaining knowledge on a subject area by taking a course. You take the course and obtain the knowledge you require. Fantastic!
We’ve just painted a clear picture of what most HR systems focus on: Your ability to complete a course or courses, check a box upon completion, and then move on to the next step in the process.
However, an LMS built to deliver skills-based training operates fundamentally differently from HR-based LMS solutions. A skills-based approach first defines the services that the people in your extended and partner networks are providing.
Then you define the skills required from each individual that make them a valued member within that network. This is based on attributes like positions, roles, and brands.
Skills-based training goes well beyond completing a course or two, doesn’t it?
Yes, there are knowledge-based components in a skills-based system, but there is also the aspect of the number of services performed and the associated quality metrics.
Verifying your knowledge and skills is what we mean by a skills-based training program, like the one we employ at LatitudeLearning.
What Should An LMS Accomplish for a Skills-Based Training Manager?
Skills-based training managers, such as those who head up technical training for large OEMs, have a multi-faceted job that calls for several unique goals to be met:
- Clearly define the essential skills for every position within the network. Whether you’re a Freight Technician Level 1, Drivetrain Technician Level 2 or a Master Technician, what skills are required? What is falling out of compliance or no longer needed? What is emerging and evolving in terms of skill sets? The answers to these questions have to be identified as a first step.
- Create a structure so that each person understands what it takes to get from Position A to Position B to Position C.
- Identify a system that can dynamically handle the massive amount of information to define programs and ever-changing skill requirements. For example, if a course taken a few years ago is no longer applicable, the person who took it is in a real bind. The system has to be constantly calculating, because essential elements within it will always change — whether it’s new courseware, new business rules you need to achieve, new technology to have, or new skills to acquire. If you don’t keep up with any of them, you fall out of compliance and are no longer appropriately skilled.
LatitudeLearning LMS has a certification and curriculum model that calculates what needs to be done natively in our platform to run these training programs. The system is also uniquely able to “slice and dice” the way we view a network of people.
For example, let’s consider a large company with different training groups servicing them. You may have a parts group, a sales group, a service group, and more. LatitudeLearning can analyze one location by these three different org structures to ensure each group appropriately receives training for their positions.
Rather than looking at organizations through a direct reporting structure, LatitudeLearning uses a more flexible position code structure. This structure reflects the common structures in dealership and service-based organizations while addressing the high turnover of transients in these networks.
We focus on the fact that often these definitions are very complex. Most of the time, the people we deliver skills-based training to are employees. We want the people within that network to truly own their responsibility in terms of training that is centrally defined by the parent organization. The people within that network must say, “I’m going to make sure I’m getting trained so that I can be fully compliant with the requirements.”
Finally, we hone in on the performance metrics driving your networks, such as Quality Scores and other metrics, then mandate those requirements be part of the certification model for the individual.
The True Measurement of a Skills-Based Training LMS? Flexibility.
A large automobile manufacturer decided to select a well-known HR LMS platform for its network of dealerships. Before long, however, they discovered that the way the platform measured success was limited – primarily seeking the answer to one simple question: Did the dealership take enough training based on credits?
In other words, if there were 20 employees in a dealership facing a requirement to take 150 credits’ worth of training across that team of 20 people, all was right with the world. Or was it? If we only followed that guideline, it wouldn’t matter what type of training the employees received. All they’d have to do is achieve 150 credits of training, collectively.
How does that work out when there are particular skills that people need to be trained on? Not very well at all. This is precisely why the company left their HR-based LMS platform and turned to LatitudeLearning and the skills-based model instead.
They’ve come to realize and appreciate that LatitudeLearning provides a detailed model that defines what it means to be a productive Technician within their network.
It’s a great success story. And it’s a strong reminder that for proper skills-based training, an HR LMS likely can’t deliver results like the skills-based LMS of LatitudeLearning.
What’s different about LatitudeLearning? Within all the native parts of our system, we’re giving training managers a necessary resource for finding the right mix of brand talent while providing certification opportunities at the individual and organizational levels.
This high degree of versatility and customization is a genuinely unique point of difference in the marketplace compared to a plethora of far more limited LMS platforms.
To learn more about leveraging skills-based training in your organization through the LatitudeLearning LMS, subscribe to the LatitudeLearning blog for the latest advancements in the extended enterprise learning space.
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