ADRIAN, MI – October 21, 2022 – Align Lenawee Talent Consortium is addressing the talent development needs of Lenawee County businesses through its new learning management system, also known as an LMS. An LMS provides online delivery for asynchronous learning.
The Align LMS launched to the public on October 1st and is now available for businesses to register.
“Companies can register their employees on the system now and start training,” said Randy Yagiela, Director of the Align Lenawee Talent Consortium. “The number of seats available to them is unlimited; they can use the system as much or as little as they see fit to meet their needs.”
The LMS currently has about 150 courses from which learners can choose. The courses fall under 13 separate categories, including: Customer Service, Essential Skills (formerly known as soft skills), Executive Leadership, Marketing, Office and Business Essentials, Organizational Skills, Personal Development, Presentation Skills, Project Management, Sales and Software Skills.
“Basically, employees can take the courses at their own pace and at their own convenience,” Sheila Blair, Align Manager, said. “Learners are engaged through quizzes, interaction with the training format, and through multi-media presentations within each course.”
She added: “Trainings can be taken on a computer, tablet or smartphone, and are bookmarked so that, even if you only have 15 minutes to take a training, the system will bookmark where you left off and you can get through the training bit by bit.”
Blair added that the courses available through the LMS also could help ease the staff time needed to conduct onboarding and other annual compliance training for companies. Some of the relevant courses include safety training, diversity and inclusion, digital citizenship, customer service, business etiquette, lean process and six sigma, and other required compliance training.
There are additional courses specific to leaders and HR staff, as well as other positions.
“There has been a public outcry from business owners in this county for essential skills training,” Yagiela said, “But employees don’t always have the time to leave their workspace to take training, especially when most companies are short handed, as many of them are now. These online courses provide the flexibility needed to be able to take the training on a mobile platform while also learning these needed skills.”
According to Blair, Align has the ability to create customized training for organizations and ensure company privacy, even though multiple companies are utilizing the same system. She also said the system allows for a lot of customization in the set up for each company.
“A company’s administrative user can customize the logo for the LMS, so employees can see their company’s logo instead of Align’s logo on the system,” she said. “They also can pick and choose which courses, among all that are offered, they want their employees accessing, and there are many more customizations, too.”
Nikki Megale, Director of Finance and Administration for W2Fuel in Adrian, tested the LMS during Align’s soft launch of the product to a few local organizations. Megale was able to assign courses to employees with deadlines and pull reports about their activities and completion rates.
“We are finding the program easy to use,” she said. “We also like how each course is taught using different types of media (to increase) employee engagement.”
The Align LMS is one piece of the Lenawee County talent pipeline system, which has a goal of providing local businesses with a steady stream of qualified talent. Align is feeding this system with other opportunities as well, including developing career exposure lessons for middle and high school students and adult certification and they also offer face-to-face training and online, live training for adults.
“We currently offer more than 3,000 trainings for employees, including nearly 200 certification courses,” Yagiela said.
Some of the reported benefits of using an LMS includes:
- Reduces staff turnover
- Delivers better engagement and retention
- Provides consistent messaging in training
- Saves time and money
- Organizes valuable training data in one location (including live training)
“When companies prioritize learning for employees, they start to develop a learning culture, which employees will positively respond to,” said Blair, an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist. “Mastery, which comes from learning, is one of the top three ingredients to ensure employee retention. The other two are employees having autonomy and a sense of purpose.”
To learn more about the LMS or other training offered by Align, you can contact Blair at sblair@lenaweenow.org, or by calling (517) 265-5141.