How to use an LMS for Onboarding—And a Better Option

A key component of onboarding new hires is teaching them exactly what they should know about working at your company and the specifics of their position. An LMS is one tool that can help you bring that information across.

But is it the best option for your HR team?
Read on to find out.

⚙️ What’s an LMS?

A learning management system, or LMS, is a program that allows organizations to train employees through online courses. LMS software is used by universities, large corporations, and mid-sized companies to streamline their process of delivering information, tracking assignments or deliverables, and monitoring participants’ progress.

❓ Why is the onboarding experience important?

The onboarding experience is essential because it prepares employees to work at your company in their new job. Due to its depth and the range of topics it covers, employee onboarding may take as long as a few months to a year.

An effective onboarding process helps new hires understand their role, company culture, and equips them to be amazing employees for the long-term. If any of these pieces is jeopardized, it can leave employees feeling insignificant, burned out, and leads to low productivity. 

For all of these reasons, it is highly important to get the onboarding experience right from the beginning.

📈 Benefits of using an LMS for employee onboarding

Onboarding is a complex process when working with multiple new hires, especially if they’re spread across multiple departments. A central platform helps you communicate general company information to them and deliver specialized training.

Using an LMS for onboarding allows you to fulfill both purposes in one virtual setting.

Here are some benefits of using an LMS for onboarding:

• It’s a central space for general information
• New hires know where to find what they need for onboarding
• Trainings are set up virtually
• HR and team leads can track new hires’ progress
• New hires can see their own progress

The daunting task of creating an employee onboarding program is easier with a centralized system like an LMS.

🧱 Core features: What you can do with an LMS

To accomplish everything that must get done when onboarding employees, an LMS offers some core features that HR teams can leverage for success.

Set up training

After researching effective onboarding programs and experimenting with what works for your firm, you can set up training in an LMS. Many LMS softwares offer video and other media file uploads, grading, timed tests, student forums, and other tools helpful for conducting a course of any type.

Personalize lessons

Because you can see new hires' individual profiles, with an LMS you can also assign each employee specific journeys relevant only to them. This is helpful when differentiating between general company-wide orientation modules and role-specific training.

Track progress

See each employee's progress in one place to track their progress in the training journey, and see what else they can learn in onboarding to be successful on the job.

Provide feedback

Give helpful feedback to employees based on their progress within the LMS. Show them how far they've come since orientation day and the roadmap of what lies ahead with their training.

🚀 Go beyond mere training management with Zavvy's onboarding software

With software as integrated and powerful as Zavvy's, your team saves time, money, and energy that an LMS cannot provide on its own. 

✈️ Preboarding

Bridge the gap between signing your contract and starting a new job by maintaining excitement and making sure that everything's taken care of by day 1 - with Zavvy's preboarding features.

📚 Grow and retain internal knowledge

When teams grow quickly, internal knowledge is easily lost and can be difficult to recover. Onboarding software allows HR teams and company leaders to retain this internal knowledge with the right system, saving time and money.

⚙️ Automate assignments and get your time back

With Zavvy, you can auto-assign courses as new hires are added to the platform. And you can do so based on criteria like department or location.

💬 Keep people engaged with little messages

To ensure employees know what they need to complete and when, you can send them reminders via Slack, MS Teams, and email through Zavvy's integrations.

📅 Automatically schedule events

Finding a time that works for everyone and booking slots can quickly get out of hand.

With Zavvy, you can set up all your onboarding events once and invite people automatically when they start.

Run events like

• Orientation with HR
• Founder intros
• Get-together for new hire cohorts
• Department intros
• and much more

without wasting time juggling dozens of calendars.

🛠 Integrate your whole tool stack

Build a holistic experience around your existing tools.

• You have content in various places? Embed them.
• Your employee data is in an HRIS system? Integrate it.
• Want to leverage Slack or Microsoft Teams? Connect it.
  

📈 Beyond video courses: Leverage research-backed, human-centered learning tools

Zavvy's user-friendly design is more engaging than LMS tools that offer video courses and other standard formats of web training. Combine micro-learning and group activities to keep new hires interested in the content and boost effectiveness. 

Share lessons in smaller sections, allowing users to understand and retain it more easily.

☑️ Engage all stakeholders 

Zavvy's automations and integrations equip you to engage stakeholders across departments in the onboarding process.

A few examples

• Automatically request tech for each new hire from IT without sending multiple emails.
• Share need-to-know information before orientation day with supervisors that have a new hire joining their teams.

👬 Onboarding buddies

Notify onboarding buddies with their new hire partner's name and tips to welcome them to the team. Introduce new employees to one another through Zavvy's Slack integration for more camaraderie and to drum up excitement before orientation day.

Employees across teams are involved in onboarding, regardless of how long they've been at the company. Zavvy helps your HR team keep them all in the loop with ease.

🛠 Tips for getting more out of your LMS or onboarding software

An LMS or onboarding software is only as powerful as its user-friendliness. 

Here are a few steps to put an LMS or onboarding software to best use:

1. Find the right balance between company onboarding and role-based new hire training
2. Live-connect existing resources to avoid multiple locations. Create unique content where needed, not blindly.
3. Set up your automation criteria with care. Every minute you spend more here will save you hours for years.
4. Include fix feedback steps to measure and improve the process meaningfully.
5. Never underestimate the value of human connections. Leverage social meetings (shadowing, buddies, coffee intros) where possible.

These 5 steps are a great starting point to use an LMS or onboarding software that your HR team can tailor to fit your needs. Take this framework and make it work for you.

➡️ Zavvy is built especially for onboarding

An LMS is designed to deliver courses, not necessarily to complete multiple tasks relevant specifically to onboarding. This makes its uses applicable to a variety of industries, but it leaves gaps in what HR teams need to complete the rest of the onboarding process. 

Ultimately, this means using an LMS with multiple other tools and figuring out a way to bridge them all together.

Zavvy's onboarding software offers the perks of an LMS and seamless integrations and automated task management. Instead of a generalized learning tool created to fill one need of multiple organizations, Zavvy's dedicated onboarding software fulfills multiple needs of HR teams for the purpose of onboarding employees. 

Zavvy allows you to create training programs that work for learners, managers, and company goals while automating tasks and integrating tools you love. 

Learn how to run high-value onboarding programs with Zavvy or book a free live demo today.

❓ FAQs

What is the best onboarding LMS?

The best onboarding LMS is more than an LMS. A dedicated onboarding tool like Zavvy fulfills not only your LMS needs, but also offers holistic solutions to onboard new hires effectively. 

A successful onboarding program acknowledges the skills a new hire brings to their role, and uses human-centered learning to teach them what else they need to know. Zavvy's employee onboarding portal leverages the best of research-based training methods and seamless integrations for a better onboarding experience than an LMS provides.

What's an employee onboarding portal, then?

An employee onboarding portal is a centralized space for new hires and stakeholders to find the information relevant to them throughout the onboarding process. New hires can find general company information assigned to everyone, as well as tasks or modules for their specific role. 

HR teams can also design onboarding buddy programs in an employee onboarding portal, inviting current employees into the onboarding process where necessary. Immediate supervisors of new hires can also be looped into their team members' progress in onboarding tasks. 

Leverage the best of an LMS and features designed for new hires with an employee onboarding portal.

When onboarding and training employees, HR teams need a tool that makes learning enjoyable.