The standard way that organizations implement a Learning Management System (LMS) is by using it as a platform to deliver prepackage training content. This isn’t a bad thing; however, it can make the training feel a little disconnected and sterilized from the employee’s experience. While disconnection may seem inevitable, organizations can prevent this by including real experiences from other employees.

Fostering a Collaborative Training Environment

LMS platforms do not have to be just repositories of content; they can be akin to a community of trainers. After all, an organization is a community of employees, so why shouldn’t the LMS reflect this? By having employees actively contributing and sharing knowledge, organizations help create a collaborative environment where trainees can engage with their coworker’s experiences and form connections while training.

These personal experiences must be framed as such and should be unique to the place of work. By applying a one-size-fits-all experience from an employee that a user will never meet falls into the same trap of prepacked content.

Aside from making training much more digestible, including experiences has a plethora of unexpected benefits.

Reinforcing Your Own Experience

To get a better understanding of something, explain it to someone else. By using one’s own experience for training, it’ll solidify that knowledge for themselves. Explaining an experience requires distilling it to its most essential parts—something that most avoid with their experiences, but in doing so they remove the excess that changes the experience for themselves. In this way, by including one’s own experiences, it is a training exercise for them too.

Building a Personal Training Brand

Sharing one’s training knowledge can help an organization build a personal brand within their industry. As an organization consistently provides valuable insights and contributions to discussions, they become recognized as an expert within their field by potential talent. This recognition then leads to an organization becoming synonymous with career development, care, and honesty that will it a more attractive option for partners or employees.

Enhancing Communication Skills

Effective communication is a vital skill in any professional setting and, like how explaining one’s experience helps them parse it, using experience as training sharpens communication skills. “What’s the point” or “how can this be said in fewer words,” become challenges that one must overcome to effectively provide training material for others. This practice naturally leads to more effective communication.

Dealing with Different Moments

Despite what trainers wish was the case, everyone’s experience will differ, and they will most likely involve different milestones of understanding. These scenarios can range wildly, as information might click under different circumstances for different people. Sharing these moments gives users the opportunity to chew on these ideas before they are forced to piece it together themselves.

Contributing to a Knowledge Base

An LMS platform typically features knowledge bases or libraries of resources. By sharing one’s experience, they contribute to this repository, making it richer and more comprehensive. Someone may find use for one’s experiences far into the future or in a completely different situation than expected. In this way, one’s experiences become a part of the organization, rather than a footnote.

Motivating and Inspiring Others

By being willing to share experience for training, one can inspire and motivate others on their training journeys (especially if the one giving the experience is well respected). Users may strive to develop and experiment with their own experiences to see if they can add something of value or push others along. Thus, sharing becomes a domino effect within the organization, leading to stronger outcomes.

Strengthening Critical Thinking

Finally, by sharing one’s experiences, it can strengthen not only their critical thinking, but also the trainees’ as well. The process of breaking down experiences and applying them to oneself requires creativity and problem solving—both highly impactful skills.

Sharing experiences through a training platform may seem unnecessary at first, but it has a great impact on the organization, its trainees, and ultimately, the one sharing. The process of using experiences as training not only solidifies the experience, but also motivates, strengthens critical thinking, practices communication skills, and sets the organization apart from others. Yet, with all of this said, implementing experiences into an LMS makes training more engaging—so try it.

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