How and why to connect your LMS to the HR management system

Often, when taking stock of the training activities carried out within a company, the results achieved are considered ineffective. In most cases, at the root of this failure is the lack of correspondence between the courses provided and the real training needs of the company and/or the employees involved.

In order for continuous training to effectively guide new skills and behaviours, improving company competitiveness, it is therefore crucial to effectively link learning to employee performance. How? An essential starting point is to link human resources management software to training management systems. In this way, HR (Human Resources) and Training (or Learning & Development) departments can share essential information and data and collaborate in order to make better decisions about people.

So let's see in detail why you should link your LMS to the HR management system.

You have a unique archive of your employees' data

HR systems collect a lot of data that can be automatically entered into your LMS if the two systems are connected. This saves time and significant administrative costs as it prevents the same information from being entered twice and eliminates discrepancies as both systems will work with the same data, reducing margins of error.

Integrating the two systems means gathering all of your employee data in one place and having a complete overview of all of your internal resources: job placement, payroll, skills, promotions, vacation plans, training courses used or planned and much more.

Strategic use of data

By integrating your HR management software with your LMS, you'll get optimized reports and can strategically use the data you get to understand the effects of training on sales, commitment, productivity and employee retention, as well as identifying gaps and training needs of individual or entire departments. This will help you to take measures that will improve not only the productivity of your internal resources, but also the turnover of your company.

Improving onboarding and talent enhancement

The integration between HR and LMS makes onboarding easier for new recruits at and facilitates the management of their placement and training. Whether they are interns, trainees or managers, you will have a complete picture of their skills and any training gaps and you will be able to optimise their integration and internal training paths.

In addition, this will help you to identify the strengths of all your employees and to entrust the right people with the different company roles, based on their real skills and individual characteristics.

Reduce management activities

If the two systems are separate, data collection, aggregation and updating is usually a manual process, resulting in wasted hours of work and increased margin of error. Think not only about the first data entry, but also about all the changes that may be necessary over time (frame changes, curriculum vitae updates, master data updates, etc.). By connecting the two software you will reduce the management activities of the HR and Training departments, which can rely on a single set of precise data to work on. In this way, the two teams can spend more time analyzing the data collected to make strategic decisions significantly increasing the productivity and competitiveness of your company.

How to connect HR management and training software

Now that we have analyzed the main advantages of having two management systems connected to each other, let's see how to connect them. Basically, you have two possibilities: integrate the two software or rely on a system that combines both functions.

Integrating HR and L&D management systems

In this case, you'll have two separate systems communicating with each other. You will then have to provide a unique data to be used in both software to be associated with each employee (e.g. serial number or social security number). Then, you will have to determine how often the data should be synchronized (in real time, once a day, etc.). Finally, you will also need to identify the structure that will handle any problems with the integrated data: mismatches, outdated data, etc. Who will be in charge of verifying the reasons for these inconsistencies? Who will correct them?

Using a system that combines both functions

The development of technology and awareness of the importance of strategic use of employee data has led to the development of systems that combine both functions.

DynDevice LMS, for example, in addition to being a training management system, has a series of additional functions that are fundamental for HR departments: management of payroll, tasks and skills; management of mandatory medical examinations; project and work order management, etc., with the added advantage of being a multidevice platform that can also be used on the move via tablet or smartphone.

The advantages of a unique software for the management of human resources and corporate training are many: you won't have to worry about data synchronization and you will have a centralized repository that meets all the administrative and training management needs of employees.

Whatever option you choose, by connecting the two systems you can assign specific objectives and skills to each employee and analyze exactly what skills need to be developed, offering the right training at the right time, ensuring a qualified and high-performance workforce. This will trigger a process aimed at developing talent within the company and reduce the economic losses related to skills gaps or ineffective training activities, increasing the company's return on investment (ROI).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator