Tens of billions of dollars that could be saved each year by government agencies, programs, and initiatives end up spent, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.1 That’s on top of burdensome administration and the widespread belief that many government agencies are far from efficient.
That doesn’t mean agencies aren’t actively working to improve, however. Many government agencies are proactively looking for ways to cut costs and increase efficiency so they can be more effective at carrying out their mission.
The primary way agency leaders calculate efficiency is by looking at productivity, according to Steve Goodrich, CEO of the Center for Organizational Excellence, Inc.2 He wrote,
“Efficiency (of government agencies) is measured through productivity, the amount of resources it takes to produce an outcome, or the ratio of output per unit of input. Making programs more efficient can reduce the amount of input required to produce an output or achieve an objective. Resources include people, money, technology, data, facilities, equipment, etc.”
When government agencies and their programs are properly organized and running smoothly, they can not only reduce costs, but also improve staff jobs, and become more “green,” which further cuts costs.
Finding practical ways to become more efficient, however, can be a challenge. What processes can be streamlined? What resources can be conserved? Most government agencies tend to focus on what their staff are already doing, overlooking one of the key ways to improve efficiency - through better staff onboarding and ongoing training. Many government leaders can promote efficiency by using a government agency LMS to deliver training.
LMS software improves the operation of government agencies in several ways. Here are a few examples:
1. Improved organization -- Organization is a prerequisite for efficiency. A government agency LMS is designed to organize eLearning content in one secure, online location. Agencies often have a lot of content and benefit from an LMS’s ability to organize data.
In addition to organizing online content, LMS software also lowers the risk of an agency losing important data and can reduce employee training costs.
2. Increased productivity -- LMS software can increase the productivity of agency staff. Since effectiveness is measured in productivity, agency leaders should make every effort to facilitate it.
“Employees and staff can enhance their productivity with eLearning opportunities,” stated a contributor to eLearning Industry.3
Many online learning possibilities are available to agency employees when LMS software is implemented. Several examples include opportunities for social learning, microlearning, mobile learning, and collaborative learning.
3. Faster, ongoing training -- “The government sector relies on continual employee reskilling,” stated Online Training Design: Workforce Reskilling in Government Agencies.4 This reskilling comes through employee training.
When employee training happens solely in a classroom, it often takes longer to ensure that employees not only understand the material, but can apply it in their position. This results in higher costs of training and a greater time investment from employees. Online learning is less time-consuming.
A report by Brandon Hall indicated that eLearning usually requires 40-60% less training time than learning that takes place in a traditional classroom setting.5 This fosters rapid onboarding, helps new hires become productive as quickly as possible, and cuts down on the time workers must spend away from their jobs, all of which make an agency more efficient.
The right type of LMS software is an ideal solution for a government agency that’s looking for ways to increase efficiency by streamlining processes and improving employee abilities. A government agency LMS not only improves organization and productivity while reducing training time and costs -- it also helps administrators get detailed training reports, allows employees to register themselves for courses, and automatically assigns training in some cases.
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