5 reasons why every small business needs a learning management system

When you're running a small business, budgets can be tight, but that doesn't mean that you can't afford training. With the help of a Learning Management, being able to train employees is affordable no matter the size of your company. Today we are going to take a look at some of the reasons why all small businesses should have a Learning Management System.

Anyone that has had anything to do with running a small business knows just how hard it is to stay up and running. Budgets are extremely tight, and often employees take on multiple roles outside of their area of expertise to make sure the organization progresses.

Committing time and money to training in this situation can be shuffled down the list of priorities, however, this can lead to building a company based  around a culture where training is not valued, which can later lead to costly mistakes and stagnant professional development for employees.

Implementing a good Learning Management System (LMS) means that you can have the best of both worlds. Saving both time and money, while still completing the training both you and your team need, is a simple process and can be reused to train new hires reducing onboarding times as well as setting new employees up for success.

According to ATD’s State of the Industry Report, in a one year period, smaller sized organizations with fewer than 500 employees spend an average of $1,888 per employee in direct learning expenses, whereas midsize companies of between 500 to 9,999 employees only spend an average of $838 per employee. With the help of a Learning Management System small businesses can reduce their training cost per employees to less that $100 per year.

In this article we are going to take a look at some of the key reason that all small businesses should be using a Learning Management System.

The cost of HR managers

When you’re a small business, employees tend to take on many roles in the business to get the job done as budgets are tight. Bearing this in mind, it’s not cost effective for most small businesses to have a HR Manager on their team to manage staff services as well as training. Implementing a Learning Management System takes care of the training for you. After setting up some learning paths relevant to your industry and having access to a course marketplace, your Learning Management System will take care of all of your training needs as you establish your business and won’t break the bank.

Outsourcing training

It might seem like a good idea at first glance, but unlike other elements of the business world that are being outsourced, sending training external to your business can have a dramatically negative effect on both the impact and budget of your program. Starting with impact, you are already restricted in what you can offer your employees due to programs available in your area. This results in “settling” on programs rather than actually getting the training that is relevant and going to engage your team. Out sourcing your training often results in employees needing to leave the workplace to take part in programs. This can be a time consuming process, and as the saying goes, “time is money”. A Learning Management System can solve both of these problems. Your training material is accessible anytime, anywhere allowing employees to experience their learning directly from their desk or from home, saving time and money, as well being more engaged and pushing their personal development by gaining access to courses that are relevant to their role within the company, and personal learning and development goals.

Easy access/storing training material

Gone are the days of having a filing cabinet to store all of your training material. It’s not uncommon for us to store all of our other business data online in this day and age, so why aren’t we doing that without training material? Well, by using a Learning Management System we are. All of our courses, employee records, and HR data can be stored and tracked through our learning management system. This ensures that all team members have access to the latest versions of all company information and can easily set up new employees with the relevant training material as the company grows from a small business into a larger organization. It might not seem like a big deal when you have only 2-3 team members, however, when that number starts to grow very fast, it’s important to be prepared to handle the growth and avoid any compliance or training complications that may arise.

Small businesses still want personalized training

Just because you’re a small business, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need your own customized training programs. Rather than build complete programs from scratch, you can now use a Learning Management System to take an existing course from a course marketplace and customize it to be relevant to your company, or build a learning pathway containing a series of courses from the marketplace that cover a range of skills need for a particular role. Tools such as Inline Editing have also made the course creation process as simple as clicking a few buttons and using drag and drop functionality. Personalized training in small business has always been too costly or time consuming, but learning technology has changed the game!

Keeping up with compliance

One of the toughest things about operating a small business is keeping up with local compliance laws and accreditation to avoid fines and stay up to date with best practices. If you are using a good Learning Management System you will have access to an extensive course marketplace that contains a range of courses from accredited training providers that can be enrolled in at the click of a button. Not only do you have access to these courses, you will always have access to the most current courses, saving time and effort in tracking down programs through external providers.