Today's work environment is vastly different than what it was decades ago. As a result, the learning solutions we use to develop our workforce needs to be built for the way we work today.

Companies need learning programs that can adapt to the needs of evolving business structures, personnel changes, and complex relationships. To achieve this, companies need to focus on the backbone—or organizational structures (also known as hierarchies)—of their learning management system.

The Future Demands Flexibility and Innovation

During the past several decades, the business world has been slowly replacing traditional top-down management hierarchies with more decentralized, flexible networks.

These new forms of business organization are based on several changes affecting today’s workforce—for example, changes with digitization, flexible work schedules, decentralized decision making, and measurement by OKRs instead of KPIs.

Learning technologies have also been affected by these changes. In fact, the changes that the business world faced during the past year have catapulted LMSs into the spotlight. Learning solutions are a critical must-have for today’s employers.

However, many of the learning systems available make it harder for companies to configure their system to adapt to evolving business challenges.

Clearly, organizations need modern learning solutions with capabilities that allow them to easily define their unique organizational structure within their LMS and adjust it when needed.

• Most LMS Platforms Are Built Around Outdated Organizational Structures

Previously, most businesses operated in a traditional pyramid organizational structure. Today, business structures are not so linear.

Modern organizational structures are complex and networked at multiple levels. They include nonlinear relationships between business units. For example:

● More than one retail concept or brand

● A mix of franchisee- and corporate-owned stores

● Locations in multiple countries

● A mix of partnerships

This complexity presents a challenge for LMS platforms because most still only support the 50-year-old pyramid-style organizational structure.

Thus, if your unique business structure doesn’t fit this box, you risk having to spend excessive time and money creating workarounds, which results in a wide range of business limitations.

In the end, these challenges mean one thing: your LMS doesn’t work for your unique organizational structure. And because of that, your learning programs suffer.

LMS Hierarchies Should Be Designed for the New World of Work

In today’s work environment, learning platforms and the LMS hierarchies informing them should do three things:

• Empower employees

• Streamline management

• Be adaptable to change

Most LMSs only support person-to-person relationships. But an LMS hierarchy suited for a modern organizational structure should support person-to-person, organization unit-to-person, and person-to-organization unit relationships.

This opens up the opportunity for hyper-focused levels of communication, learning content, reporting, and more.

For example, an individual employee at a franchise restaurant may need to be connected simultaneously to the franchise location, a multiunit owner office, a regional group, a territory, or a country. The regional manager for that franchise group may only want to send targeted communications or assign learning to all the stores in one city, but they should easily have access to personnel data, training results, and communications for their entire region.

The Impact of a Modern LMS Hierarchy

An LMS hierarchy impacts the efficiency of every function within the learning system. To that end, a modern LMS hierarchy affords organizations more possibilities for success with their learning programs.

For example:

● Permissions. Target content and course sharing to employees with precision or create custom job permissions

● Approvals. Give employees control over their learning experience to build greater work satisfaction

● Learning assignments and content. Assign courses, curricula, and events more quickly to an entire cross-functional group versus person by person

● Communication and social collaboration. Target employee engagement by regions, areas, and groups

● Performance and goals. Define relationships to drive a more proactive employee review process

● Reporting. Choose exactly which data to share and with whom across the organization

If you’re purchasing or upgrading an LMS, take into account the hierarchy component of the system. Make sure it supports today’s demands and your organization’s evolving needs.

Schoox supports how your employees work today and how your managers need to manage, delivers flexibility as you grow and change, and provides actionable, data-driven insights to support your success.

Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from the Schoox Corporate Learning blog.