| 18 January 2022
The healthcare workforce is in crisis, with a distinct shortage of healthcare employees at all levels and increased pressures on staff. The situation has only been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with so many healthcare staff suffering from burnout. NHS hospitals, mental health services and community providers are now reporting a shortage of nearly 84,000 FTE staff (Kings Fund). Significant numbers of the workforce are also intending to leave, with 28% of nurses and health visitors leaving the NHS within the first three years of their service (Kings Fund).
Addressing the healthcare workforce challenge will require intensive and sustained action across all areas of the system, with training, retention, and workforce planning being integral to this. Improving staff retention and developing a supportive environment that values staff has never been more important in the healthcare workforce and utilising a Learning Management System (LMS) can be an effective way to support this.
What is an LMS?
An LMS is a solution that supports the administration and delivery of training and eLearning, enabling organisations to engage their staff with powerful blended learning and collaboration. An LMS allows organisations to quickly scale up their learning schedules and reach employees whenever and wherever needed, with powerful tracking and reporting to keep on top of results.
How can an LMS help with onboarding?
Effective onboarding is one of the best ways to welcome and retain new employees, however, despite its importance, the onboarding process is often incredibly inefficient. With a structured approach to onboarding and the correct tools, healthcare organisations can ensure employees begin their new role with all the relevant skills and compliance training in place. When it comes to managing this process, Learning Management Systems play a central role by enabling new employees to quickly acquire the knowledge, skills, and behaviours required to succeed.
LMS functionality can offer learning workflows, blended learning solutions and systemised training methods to quickly provide new employees with the information and tools they require to confidently go about their role, enabling healthcare organisations to speed up the initial onboarding process. This systematic approach can help to create a sustainable healthcare workforce in the longer term, by improving staff retention.
An LMS is a powerful software that enables organisations to improve their onboarding processes by:
- Creating learning plans and course content that can easily be assigned to new employees.
- Building a comprehensive induction performance management process and automatically offering this to new employees.
- Assigning competencies to users based on their position.
- Highlighting useful resources to bring key information to the fore.
- Getting a complete picture of usage, progress and achievement for new employees.
How can an LMS help with ongoing employee retention?
An LMS can support ongoing employee retention in many ways, but three top examples include:
1) Skill development
With an LMS, organisations can easily deliver each employee with a tailored learning experience which enables staff to develop the specific competencies required to improve their performance within an existing role, or to prepare for new responsibilities. Learning pathways that are based on performance, roles, and completion of other courses, can be developed meaning that learners can quickly access training that is relevant to their own personal development.
2) Motivate and engage employees
When it comes to encouraging long-term employee retention, motivation and engagement is just as important as any formal training, which is why a good LMS should offer powerful peer-to-peer collaboration tools and a complete performance management system. This empowers workforces to share knowledge and resources through collaborative workspaces, increasing engagement levels.
3) Learn anytime, anywhere
Delivering training with an LMS means that employees can learn at their own pace, at a time that’s most convenient to them. Bite-sized learning in a mobile-optimised format allows true flexibility for learners.
How can we help?
We’ve been championing the voices of the UK healthcare workforce since 2002. At Skills for Health, we have collaborated with thousands of NHS and healthcare providers to develop solutions that improve skills, jobs, and roles to achieve better patient outcomes. Learn more about Skills for Health.
LearnSpace is our hassle-free LMS, based on Totara Learn, that makes it easy for staff to access learning at any time and easy for managers to progress training needs to meet organisational compliance and skills development goals. For more information on how LearnSpace can help your organisation to enhance learning compliance, performance and improve staff retention, contact us today.
Our other solutions include:
- eLearning for Healthcare
- Custom Rostering System (CRS)
- Quality Mark Training Assurance
LearnSpace is our hassle-free LMS, based on Totara Learn, that makes it easy for staff to access learning at any time and easy for managers to progress training needs to meet organisational compliance and skills development goals. For more information on how LearnSpace can help your organisation to enhance learning compliance, performance and improve staff retention, contact us today.