Corporate LMS as an Integrated Tool

Swati Chawla, Director of People & Culture, Philip Morris Malaysia

In the last decade, with the onset of integrated technology and the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), learning management system (LMS) has a new identity and has advanced in its purpose from being a traditional record keeping digital tool to a fully integrated learning, and in some cases an integrated learning and talent management platform.

“The learning capabilities imparted through the tool are sustainable whilst having the flexibility that meets both – the employee’s learning needs and the business requirements”

The space has seen an introduction of new features, additional customization, enhanced user experience, improved scalability, ease of configurations, and across platform collaboration for integrated data usage and flows.  

LMS as a whole and with a New Identity and Purpose:

So comes the question, how have we leveraged on LMS? As a company that has embraced technology and innovation to bring new and differentiated products to our consumers and one, which believes that consumer experience is a reflection of employee experience, we had to ensure the best-in-class experience through the employee journey and key touch points. One such area being our Learning Management System. 

LMS as a Customized Blended Learning Delivery System:

At Philip Morris Malaysia (PMM), the LMS, in addition to delivering learning solutions for employees, is central to driving our transformation and vision towards a smoke-free future. The learning capabilities imparted through the tool are sustainable whilst having the flexibility that meets both – the employee’s learning needs and the business requirements. This is vital at this point, in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, where face-to-face learning approaches are not conducive and practical from a deployment standpoint.

The globally managed platform not only has a global catalog of materials but also allows for localization and customization, letting the various markets and functions customize programs to their learning needs and business requirements. Each market can curate its own content making it relevant for each employee based on their context and reality. Besides that, there is an ability to create a blended approach to learning by marrying the traditional face-to-face educational approach with online learning modules, global with local modules, and mix and match materials from other markets.

LMS for Community Management

In addition to being a learning delivery platform, at PMM, LMS has also evolved into a community management tool to engage employees on the all-important topics of health and wellbeing, work-life balance, productivity, etc. We leverage the various community to crowdsource ideas, learn from others and allow employees to engage on different topics of interest. The topics could range from business topics such as the science behind our products to managing workload to parents connecting on “managing children’s health during lockdown” etc. The platform frequently comes into play, as we are able to introduce micro-learning nuggets because of the ability of the platform to host bite-sized content to attain specific learning outcomes.

A senior employee of PMM mentioned, “FUSE, an online platform, for me is a self-paced learning platform and what’s great about it is you don't need to rush to complete the training as it will record your progress and you can continue your learnings again when you are available.” Platforms such as this for our employees provide different learning content such as leadership, self-development, and ways of working as well as several surveys on topics such as building resilience.

LMS for Behavior Change & Engagement

We also utilize “Centrical” – a platform that allows us to use gamification, personalized micro-learning, and host quizzes to educate employees while creating a healthy competition with opportunities to earn rewards. Employees also have the flexibility to pause and continue their modules as and when they want, take quizzes, play games, and compete from any place of their choice. Managers are able to track their teams learning progress, nudge where required, and track relative performance and interest of the employees. The tracking of the utilization of the various tools also allows the people and culture team to gauge interests from the employees, to pivot as well as curate topics to support their needs.

LMS as a Personalized Virtual Reality Tool

Our global L&D team keeps innovating to come out with personalized and innovative ways to embark training and development opportunities to our employees. This was evident through a recently launched program “AlertDriving” introduced by our team in safety and security to help employees gauge their driving skills, identify high-risk behaviors and courses, correct/mitigate them, all delivered through VR

LMS continues to evolve and attain an important place and purpose in our organization.

The biggest advantages of our LMS are its integration with work (through bite-size learnings, communities, gamification, quiz, use of virtual reality, crowdsourcing ideas, etc.), the flexible pace of learning, relevant content through personalization, and the wide accessibility.

It allows employees to come together as a whole to make our business successful while enhancing learning and engagement.

It is our responsibility, as HR professionals, to embrace the advancement and change in purpose of LMS and be at the forefront in driving employee’s learning and growth with best-in-class experiences.

LMS

Learning Management

Virtual Reality

Artificial Intelligence