The Benefits of Using a CMS for your Training Management

Date Posted: Thursday, 21 March 2013 23:33

Posted By: Kerry

Tags: training cms

Staff training can be something of a headache for larger organisations, as employees in different departments, or even individuals, have various needs. Further to this, an enterprise may have very specific training that it needs to put in place for its industry.
Rolling out effective training can be difficult. From the office juniors who need to learn the basics, to those in engineering that need to learn about how to use the latest equipment, learning can vary tremendously within one company.
The solution to this is a formal learning management portal, where employees can login, have their training provided to them when they have free time and have the content delivered on tap.

Manage multiple learning accounts

Training headaches can be addressed by implementing a CMS with the capability of providing a learning platform, which can be written to coincide with a variety of industry specific requirements.
For the enterprise, it’s important that time isn’t wasted on training, that it’s effective and can be delivered in an effective manner. With a CMS, this is achievable and cost effective, as it will ensure that the employee learns whilst remaining productive in their work.

This doesn’t mean that the employee has to logon and do everything through a browser either, CMS can be written so that there is a bespoke solution in place for every department. This can be based in eLearning, on-the-job training, document and soft skills and much more, depending very much on the enterprise’s needs.
Further to this, having a CMS-based learning platform means that each individual, who has specific training requirements, can have his learning environment tailored to suit him using training plan functionality.

Manage resources

It’s also possible to manage all of the company training resources using the CMS, especially with larger organisations which may have a large amount of training programs going on within various departments.
A CMS can help manage training rooms, demonstration kits, the trainers themselves and much more. This can be delivered over the intranet or via a portal. This is something that we’re seeing a lot of now and many schools and colleges now use a portal in order to deliver learning materials and more to their students.
It’s also possible with a CMS to have a collaborative learning environment, so that staff who are on the same training program can quickly and easily collaborate using the CMS social functions such as instant messaging, document sharing and wikis.

The main benefits of CMS-based training

The beauty of having your training set up on the CMS is firstly, that employees can access training modules at a time that is convenient for them. This is especially true of CMS that are hosted in the cloud, as employees can also access the training from home, if they prefer to do the training in their own time away from the office.
This means that rather than being stuck in training for hours on end, employees can pick and choose the times they access the training, if it’s document based. The content is delivered upon request and the employee can access it for an hour here or half an hour there.
This is important for busy enterprises, which may need to shelve scheduled training in order to make time for the most important thing, keeping the enterprise running productively and ensuring the training doesn’t get in the way of people doing their jobs.
Further to this, it does away with much of the need for face-to-face training, which can be costly and time consuming. With a CMS, the trainer can create all the necessary materials and deliver them upon request.
This is especially true of classroom-based training as, whilst it’s possible to train several employees at once, they are not all getting the same benefit and some will come away confused and needing to ask more questions.

Refresher courses and other training

It’s not just new employees that need training, ongoing learning is important to an enterprise in many ways. Giving software refresher courses when newer versions of the software they use is out is just one way that a refresher course can benefit an individual and organisation.
This ensures that time is not wasted in an organisation on employees who struggle to find their way around new software. A simple, straightforward and relatively short training course to introduce new features is all it really takes.
Likewise, new employees will need an introduction to all aspects of the company and a CMS can provide this in the form of an introductory training course. This could include company policies on internet and social media use, an introduction to the company software and even the CMS itself.

What form should training take?

This will be looked at in the planning stages ideally and a good CMS will work with a company to provide a solution that is the ideal for their organisation. Should training take the form of a web-based portal, where employees can logon whenever they like, or does your organisation require a more structured approach to learning than this?
This will of course depend on the individual requirements of the organisation and whether it believes that web tutorials will be an effective learning environment for its employees.
It doesn’t have to be tutorial based in these days of interactivity of course, and it’s possible to set up multiple choice questions and quizzes to ensure that material has been taken in.
It’s also possible to access each employee on an individual basis by creating competencies training to test gaps in knowledge. These can then be followed up with a personalised training course for each employee with various learning elements being distributed to them.
The beauty of a CMS training platform is that it can be fully integrated with the company CMS and if this includes a lot of information which is relevant to the company, it can be found easily through wikis, blogs and discussion boards. This also helps new employees to familiarise themselves with all aspects of an organisation and its staff, enabling them to settle into work quickly and easily.
Finally, a CMS learning platform gives managers the opportunity to monitor and access employees and their abilities, making promotions a more simplified process too. This is because the training that each worker has completed will flag up and allow managers to see which employees are doing the most to get ahead in the company, and reward them accordingly.
The ROI on a CMS learning environment is not to be discounted either. In terms of productivity and wasted time, a company can make huge savings, so it’s definitely worth considering.



Source: http://www.elcomcms.com