If you are already using a Learning Management System – and you should be – you are already enjoying a number of benefits. You know how many of your employees are enrolled in each of your training courses at any time. You know who has completed those courses, and how well they have done on embedded quizzes. And when courses are done, you can easily follow up with your trainees by emailing them additional course units, reminders to use what they learned in training, and lots of encouragement.

But have you taken the way you use your LMS to a higher level, by. . .

Using your LMS to monitor and manage training that you deliver to your employees on their mobile devices?

The Many Benefits of a Mobile Training Platform

Before we explore the pluses of using a mobile friendly LMS to monitor your training, let’s ask two basic questions. First, are you training your employees on mobile devices? And second, could offering mobile training solve any of the bottlenecks you are currently facing in your training?

A mobile training platform can be just the solution you are looking for if you are facing challenges like these . . .

• Your employees work in multiple locations and it is impractical to have them all travel to a central training center.
• You are about to introduce a new product or service and need to train a large number of employees about it quickly.
• You are opening a number of new businesses – you’re expanding! – and need to train lots of employees quickly.
• You hire a number of employees for short periods of time to fill specific staffing needs. Example: You need to staff a number of gardening supply stores for the summer months only, and usually hire students who you need to train quickly.
• You have older training materials – maybe printed booklets or tests – and need an effective way to update and disseminate them quickly to a large number of workers.
• You need to update your training materials often. Mobile training programs can be updated quickly by your training team, which can also produce multiple versions of the same training materials for use in different regions, or even in different languages.
• You can foresee that mobile training will deliver more training at a lower cost. Not many people realize that mobile training can deliver cost savings. When you already have a training program in your system, rolling it out to new employees will cost very little money. And if you need to update a mobile training course, you and your training designers can typically get the job done quickly, at less cost than creating a new course “from the ground up.” So remember that mobile training can save you a lot of money in design costs.
• You can offer instant, pinpointed training when you need it. If one of your company locations is hiring, new employees can be trained immediately – just hand them a tablet or let them log on using their phones. There is no longer a need to schedule a day of training in your company learning center.

But Can You Make mLearning Work? Five Issues to Think About

 Mobile training is just the solution to challenges like those. But despite the fact that a mobile training platform can solve those problems remember that it is not a “magic bullet.” You cannot just create eLearning courses for delivery on mobile devices and sit back and wait for great training to happen.

To optimize training on a mobile-friendly LMS, you have to solve some practical problems like these . . .

1. How many of the employees you will train already have mobile devices? And if they do, can you require them to use their own devices to complete their training? In many cases, you can. But if your labor pool is made up of individuals who do not own smartphones, or whose data plans will not provide the extra bandwidth they need to take your training, you will have to find another way. One is to equip your additional locations with tablets that employees can use to take your courses. Tip: Remember to structure your courses so your employees will need to log on with their own credentials; if you don’t, you will have no way to track the training they have taken or use your LMS to monitor their progress.

2. Do you have good Wi-Fi in the locations where your employees will train? Chances are you do, but be sure to find out before you take your mobile training live.

3. Will you expect your employees to take their training at home or in other non-work locations? If you will, how will that requirement be affected by considerations #1 and #2, described just above? 

4. Can the kind of training you need be deliverable on mobile devices? Yes, mobile devices are pretty powerful. But let’s face the fact that they are little and that if your training is highly interactive (requiring trainees to respond to questions via a touch interface), delivery to smartphones might not offer the right kind of training experience. Tablets might work better. Again, you should consider this issue before deciding that mobile training is the best option for your training needs. 

5. Have you thought about security issues? Be sure to speak with an experienced training development company about this issue. Do you really want your employees to be sitting in Starbucks locations while they take your training on their phones, for example? If an employee loses his or her phone and someone else picks it up, what risks will that present to your company? There are steps you can take, like requiring employees to log in before starting to train and having training sessions time out after a few minutes if the user has been idle. But be sure to consider cybersecurity as you plan your mobile training. 

The Benefits of Using an LMS to Manage Mobile Training

 After you have addressed those caveats and considerations, you can focus on creating strong mobile training programs and using your LMS to track their use. If you are not sure how that might work, why not speak with a Tortal Training Expert today, and learn more about Tortal’s LMS?

How will you benefit from integrating your mobile training with your LMS? Here are some advantages to consider . . .

• You will be able to know who is taking your mobile training, how much of it they have completed, how they have performed on embedded quizzes, and more.
• Your employees will be more engaged and will learn more. A mobile LMS allows you to communicate directly with trainees to deliver messages like, “You just completed Unit 3. You are a star!” and, “If you start Unit 4 today, we have a complimentary Starbucks card for you!”
• More of your employees will complete their training. Why? Because if one worker pauses for a day after completing one unit, your LMS will alert you and send an automated email to that worker to say, “Don’t forget to jump back on and complete Unit 4!”
• You can automate the delivery of additional training units. Every two weeks, your employees can receive a new training unit on their phones, or at any interval you decide.
• You can onboard new employees more easily, thanks to mobile training. And thanks to your LMS, that process can be recorded immediately in new employees’ HR files.
• Your advanced training will attract better employees to your company. When you can tell prospective employees that you offer advanced, mobile-delivered training, they become more motivated to work for you. Why? Because when applicants hear that your company is offering training that will help them learn and succeed, they become more likely to see your company as an employer of choice. And they will tell other people, and word will get around that you are a forward-thinking company that trains its employees.
• And you may be able to monitor what is happening . . . using your own mobile device. It’s another benefit of using your LMS. Be sure to talk about that when you speak with a Tortal Training advisor about how your mobile training can work with your LMS to deliver better training.

 On-demand learning allows users to access training on mobile devices when they need it. Point-of-need learning lets your employees access the training materials on the job to solve issues or answer questions they may have without needing to call a supervisor or coworker for help.

Integrate Your Mobile Training with Your LMS . . . and Succeed!

Thanks to your mobile-friendly LMS, you can become a company that trains consistently, immediately and regularly. The result? You build a more skilled, more agile workforce that helps you build your competitiveness.