Modernize Employee Learning Development Through Cloud

Increasingly, the lack of a learning development strategy is plaguing state and local agencies — including trial court systems — with problems such as failing to track professional certifications and compliance training for employees. The culprits are practices and technology systems that no longer align with how people work. As these processes and systems grow older, they can become problematic for the agencies using them.

Unsurprisingly, outdated practices and technologies often go together. Look at agencies that still use paper. They spend valuable energy, money and time performing manual, repetitive labor that’s often prone to error.

Subpar learning development can create frustrating hurdles for human resources (HR) personnel and managers. For both parties, costs are higher, processes are slower and their employees waste time and energy. After that, however, the problem escalates as learning development stalls. Over time, state and local employees become less engaged, less satisfied and less compliant with government requirements. Collectively, these shortcomings make it harder for agencies to deliver the highest-quality customer experience (CX) to citizens.

“Across all of government, particularly in court systems, we’re seeing many agencies struggling because they’re still leveraging outdated technology to manage their compliance training, employee engagement and professional development,” said Jared Bogert, Vice President at Cornerstone.

Subpar compliance management can trigger an avalanche of problems for agencies. For instance, compliance at trial court systems often requires managing and tracking annual certification for court administrators. Agencies that fail to accurately record such certifications can face financial penalties, negative headlines and even public outrage.

“If there is a compliance issue, it can be very costly,” Bogert said. “Having an agency’s workforce compliant and up to speed with what’s happening in their jurisdiction while providing the best CX and public services for citizens is key.”

For too long, agencies have relied on legacy tools and practices that can’t affordably evolve alongside their citizens and workforces. Cloud, however, can drive real progress for agencies by hosting their learning management systems (LMS).

The Solution: Leverage Cloud-Based LMS

Agencies that combine cloud’s elasticity with LMS suites can tailor the learning development tracks that are best for their employees and missions.

Consider criminal justice organizations such as the Massachusetts Court System. After implementing cloud-based LMS, such agencies can help their employees grow professionally with training that engages and inspires them. Gradually, these workers become more enthusiastic about their work; they also try to comply with security requirements more often and learn new skills to serve their organization’s mission. The force behind these educational pathways is cloud, which is easily customizable and can add new training applications on demand.

Cost savings are another benefit. Cloud conveniently delivers resources on demand with little physical IT, saving large amounts of budget dollars that previously went to maintaining solid hardware. Using cloud, agencies can also get the latest versions of software without managing costly or disruptive updates.

“The most critical piece of adopting cloud is reducing the need for investing in traditional, large-scale IT infrastructures,” Bogert said. “The cost savings can be rather significant.”

Cloud, however, can only do so much. To truly leverage LMS, agencies need to take outdated processes such as paper files and bring them into the present. Using cloud, HR and management staff can more easily perform learning development tasks such as tracking employees’ professional certifications.

This article is an excerpt from our recent report, “Boosting Employee Satisfaction With Modern Learning Development.” Download the full report here.