Businesses that set measurable goals achieve more than those that don’t, according to a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine.1 “Goals help you stay focused and they can prevent your business from becoming stagnant,” stated The Balance.2 “Your business goals keep you moving forward and set the stage for ongoing success.”
What business goals did your company set for this year? Is it on track to meet them by the end of the year? If not, an LMS can help.
3 Business Goals Your LMS Can Help You Meet This Year
While an LMS can’t contribute to every business goal you have, it can significantly move the needle on a few of the most common objectives leaders want to meet. Here are three common business goals and how you can use your learning management system to meet them:
1. Reach your internal promotion target
Promoting from within is a common objective within HR and recruitment teams because it helps them find the right people for the right positions and reduce the financial burden of turnover. It is also an excellent recruiting tool since it shows that employees have growth potential and your company is committed to its workers.
If your enterprise is falling short of its goal to promote a certain percentage of workers, or fill a percentage of new roles, from within the company, start leveraging your LMS.
A business LMS is built to train employees and can help upskill workers so they’re ready for a promotion. For example, you could create an online course that prepares those in non-supervisory roles for managerial positions. Vary the course to meet the needs of future sales managers, HR managers, etc. Because the preparatory course would take place online, you would be able to train a dispersed workforce and promote a greater number of employees more quickly than you would with in-person training.
2. Increase customer retention and upsells
An increase in customer retention of just five percent can increase profits by up to 95 percent.2 This makes improving customer retention one of the most lucrative business goals a company can set. Upselling further increases profits.
An extended enterprise LMS can help businesses retain current customers by providing them with training on complex products, such as technology. This ensures customers get more value for their money and use products properly.
The more value customers get from products, the more likely they will be to purchase additional products from your company and repeat (or upgrade) their purchases. Also, as they have consistently positive experiences using your products, you increase the chances that they will refer new customers to your business.
3. Retain new hires
Companies that experience significant turnover see a major impact on their bottom line as the average employee exit costs companies 33 percent of the individual’s salary.3 Most companies struggle with retaining new hires, so increasing employee retention is often a necessary business goal to set at the start of the year.
To retain new hires, you must provide them with a positive onboarding experience. In addition, managers should help workers meet the professional goals they have for themselves. When workers are moving toward where they want to be professionally, they are less likely to feel stagnant and more likely to stick with an employer. Creating professional growth paths for different departments using LMS learning paths is one way to support your workers’ goals.
Before setting employees on a professional growth path, talk with them to determine if they're ready to jump into growth courses and move up in their department. Some may prefer to transfer between departments. A different online course should be developed for these workers.
Motivate Workers to Meet Your Company’s Business Objectives
You can create courses to prepare employees for promotion, provide customers with product training, and set new hires on a personal growth path, but if your employees aren’t motivated to help your company meet its goals, ending the year on a strong note will be difficult. Simply giving each department or team a goal to hit can help motivate workers, but you can go a step further.
Try tying incentives to department-specific goals to increase motivation even more. Incentives give employees something to look forward and, if the incentive is something the employee wants badly, could greatly increase their drive to perform. Incentives could include group outings, a work-from-home day, a company-sponsored lunch, a certificate of achievement, or an extra PTO day.
To help employees better meet goals and earn the incentives they want, use your eLearning system to create online courses that include information about the goals, explain why they exist, and provide practical tips for how to meet them. And, of course, offer documentation on the incentive and how to achieve it in your LMS’s resource library.
Statistics prove that an LMS improves business performance. Want to learn more? Read this.
References:
1. Small Business Chron. What goals need to be set for a business? https://smallbusiness.chron.com/goals-need-set-business-905.html.
2. Small Business Trends. Customer retention statistics -- the ultimate collection for small business. https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/10/customer-retention-statistics.html.
3. Tiny Pulse. 13 surprising statistics about employee retention. https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/13-surprising-statistics-about-employee-retention.
