Rapid changes in technology along with a major shift in workplace culture are two forces driving the demand for more Learning & Development (L&D) opportunities. Regardless of industry, upskilling and reskilling have become a necessary part of talent strategies, and organizations are ready to invest in their workforce.
While Learning Management Systems (LMS) are valuable for distributing required training programs, L&D pros need a more robust and intelligent tech stack to meet current and future business needs. Organizations have learned that personalized skill building leads to greater success. Learners have expectations for an intuitive User Interface (UI), as well as the desire for connection across technology platforms.
The answer to these demands may be found in a Learning Experience Platform (LXP). An LXP is a user-centered software system that acts as a hub for an organization’s skill-building operations. Here users find learning resources and community spaces to learn together, while administrators gain access to insights that help them assess and close skill gaps at scale.
Here are the top features to look for as you consider which LXP is right for your organization:
1. The Right UI for Learners AND Admins
An effective LXP UI focuses on keeping learners engaged and giving admins the tools they need to derive and share insights from data:
Learner Engagement
LXP UI can drive learner engagement in a few different ways: first, a good LXP’s UI should be as easy to navigate as possible and should surface only the most relevant courses for your learners. Second, it should meet your learners in the flow of work. One way is to integrate your learning tech into your existing chat technologies, so learners receive notifications and recommendations as directly as possible.
Performance Visualizations
It’s true what they say. A picture is worth a thousand words. For admins, an effective LXP UI should make creating and distributing data visualizations as quick and easy as possible. These visualizations will help admins derive faster insights and then present that data in a persuasive way to senior leadership. This grants far greater visibility into the strengths and weaknesses of any training process, which in turn, streamlines the improvement of that process. It also means finally saying goodbye to clunky spreadsheets and pivot tables.
2. Expanded Content
A key feature of the LXP is an expanded range of content — from both inside and outside your organization.
Learning without Boundaries
Curating content that originates outside of your organization is an excellent way to ensure your workforce remains competitive. It opens your workforce up to a whole world of learning opportunities, packaged with your company’s brand and culture.
Ensuring your LXP features a healthy content mix also creates more robust learning and skill-building paths within your organization. Different learners will have different learning styles, and the more diverse content you can offer them, the more learners will find the type of training opportunity that appeals to their particular learning style and content needs. This will help with engagement, retention, and, ultimately, training effectiveness.
Housing and Enhancing Content
Different LXPs include different systems for categorizing and organizing the content you load into them. Some particularly effective LXPs even complement content by assigning it to specific skill tags, breaking it into milestones, or polling both instructors and learners on how the content may be made even more effective.
3. Personalized Skill Development
With the Great Reshuffle underway, businesses are learning that this new workforce culture requires personalized skill-development tracks to increase employee retention and success. LXPs accomplish this in a couple of ways.
Fast-Track Skill Development
Administrators can curate content to fast-track employee skill building. This eliminates a lot of wasted time and effort training users on skills they already have attained or don’t need. It also ensures that your people are learning personally relevant and business-critical skills.
Smart Learning Tracks
LXP intelligent analytics monitor user behavior, course outcomes, and industry benchmarking to curate a selection of relevant skill-building opportunities from across all available materials. This allows users to cross-train into other areas before the need ever arises, opening the door to internal movement within your organization.
4. Social Tools and Functionality
As more businesses embrace a hybrid or full-distance work model for the long-term, the workforce has sought new and meaningful ways to connect as a community. Most LXPs feature social tools that encourage users to collaborate and share their learning experiences.
Learn Together
Users can like and comment on content, share items with other users, ask direct questions to course instructors, and join learning groups to connect with users who have common interests. These social interactions improve worker morale, create excitement around the learning experience, and encourage greater participation in skill development.
Social Feedback
These social features help administrators, too. By monitoring comment conversations and utilizing analytics that show participation rates, administrators can make adjustments as needed to improve the quality of material available to their workforce.
5. Rich Analytics
Behind all of these LXP features is the ultimate driving force: rich, intelligent data analysis. The metrics offered by these platforms are a better measure of workforce success. The old benchmarks, hours of engagement and courses completed, pale in comparison to what administrators can learn when their workforce is using an LXP.
Connect Learning to Skill Building
Metrics on platforms like LMSs only track course-completion rate, severely limiting the usefulness of their data output. However, modern, intelligent LXPs not only track course completion, but they also allow admins to tag courses by skill. This allows your organization to understand which courses your learners are completing, which skills they’re learning and which skill gaps you’re closing, and how effective your reskilling and upskilling programs are.
Moreover, LXPs typically come with a standardized skills taxonomy or offer the ability for users to create one specific to their org. This enables greater organization and alignment when analyzing progress towards closing skill gaps.
Future-Proof your Workforce
Organizations that embrace a culture of learning will have a leg up on their competition. Businesses that invest in their workforce see greater employee satisfaction and retention. If you’re interested in bringing an LXP into your L&D mix, make sure it offers everything your organization needs.
Topics: Learning technology
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