LMS, lms integration, employee engagement

Important Tips to Fully Utilize LMS Integrations for Engaging Training

by Debbie Williams

According to Gallup, 15% of all U.S. employees are actively disengaged at work.1 This may not sound like a high percentage of people, but it adds up to over 23 million individuals, as there are currently 155.18 million people who are employed in the United States.2 

15%-1

Employee disengagement negatively affects organizations in a myriad of ways. “Actively disengaged employees cause disruption and dissatisfaction within the company,” stated the blog article Why Employee Engagement Has a Direct Impact on Your Business Bottom Line.3 “Even actively engaged employees can experience decreased morale if the overall team's level of engagement falters. Just a few actively disengaged employees can have a net negative effect on the work place.” 

The High Cost of Employee Disengagement

According to the aforementioned article, disengaged employees can negatively affect customers and cost companies money. They also contribute to a higher rate of turnover and are absent from work more often than engaged workers. “The cost of overtime to cover illness, training new employees, and worker’s compensation adds up over time.”

Employee disengagement costs the U.S. economy $450-$550 billion each year, per HR Cloud.4 To prevent this issue from escalating, company decision makers should take steps to increase worker satisfaction. One step is to create and deliver relevant and enjoyable training programs through an online learning platform, such as an LMS system. Fully utilizing LMS integrations will help leaders drive learner engagement, which can ultimately boost employee engagement. 

 

What are LMS Integrations?

LMS integrations are tools that integrate an LMS system with other applications an organization uses. These integrative tools improve communication by connecting and deploying systems seamlessly across an entire organization. A few benefits of an LMS integration include:

  • Streamlined internal processes
  • More accurate data sharing methods
  • Prevention of an LMS being used in isolation
  • An increase in LMS value 
  • Promotion of user adoption through enabling learners to continue interacting with familiar applications along with the eLearning platform
  • Facilitation of engaging training

An LMS system should not be siloed away from the rest of a company’s software. To improve efficiency and communication, systems need to connect and deploy harmoniously across an organization. TOPYX LMS integration solutions streamline internal processes and ensure accurate data sharing methods. 

SSO & API

  • TOPYX LMS system aligns with Single Sign-on (SSO), API, FTP, and FTPS, and delivers a superior user experience. This reduces the need for users to repeatedly sign in and remember a variety of passwords.
  • Easily manage the role permissions for users and administrators by passing role assignments into TOPYX LMS via the API or SSO.
  • Use the API or SSO integration to create users, add them to groups, and enroll them in courses.

Salesforce

 

  • The TOPYX LMS Salesforce integration makes it easy to import and export user data between systems, qualify and manage new users, and create custom reports and analytics dashboards.

iMIS RiSE

  • The TOPYX iMIS RiSE integration makes it easy to connect the iMIS Engagement Management System popular with many associations to your TOPYX site seamlessly, sending details in and out of both systems.  

Webinar

  • TOPYX integrates with GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, WebEx Meeting Center, and Zoom.
  • Access all your data within the LMS while delivering courses via webinar.
  • Easily establish electronic-led training (ELT) sessions and webinars from the LMS.
  • MS Teams LTI options are available with TOPYX

Deep Linking

  • Embed TOPYX deep links to materials, courses, posts, content and more in other applications, websites and tools your users use.
  • Embed content in TOPYX using the built-in TOPYX Power Editor to design and publish content on the fly.
  • Track and report on content usage, learner progress, completions and more with deep links to reporting and analytics.

Contact us to receive an assessment of your current environment. We can analyze your unique learning goals and determine what integration options are the best fit.

How to Utilize LMS Integrations to Boost Employee Engagement with Training

If your workforce is under-productive and experiencing high turnover, make training easier to participate in and more enjoyable by utilizing LMS integrations. Here’s how:

1) Deliver webinar training seamlessly with LMS integrations - Webinars, or web-based seminars, take place online through video conferencing software. Webinars make training more exciting and give remote learners a sense of connection with their peers. Webinars are often a low-cost and time-saving way for organizations to keep learners engaged and skilled. 

The Access Group5 commented on delivering engaging webinar training:

  • “Annotation tools can be used to highlight areas on your screen, especially if there is a lot to look at. Very useful for the larger demonstration-style webinars. You can draw arrows and shapes, use pointers, or tick off list items.
  • For smaller interactive training sessions, you can pass control to another user so they can try out a feature for themselves to help you assess their learning.
  • Ask a question using the polling tool. Useful for both large and small training sessions and it is anonymous so there are no pointing fingers or fear about choosing the wrong answer. It could be a pre-emptive question to get users to think about what you are going to cover or gauge opinion in the ‘room.’”

Webinar tools are included in most LMS systems’ social learning features. TOPYX LMS system features many social learning tools, including webinar functionality, that make it simple for organizations to create engaging training that unifies a dispersed workforce. 

“Webinars are an ideal tool for increasing employee engagement. Collaborative Exchange wrote, ‘Utilize webinar and webcasting services. These visual, interactive, web-based seminars offer features like polls, applications like gamification, and the element of real-time authenticity, all of which make it more enticing to attend and easier for the audience to connect,” stated the blog article Using Webinars to Increase Employee Engagement.  

2) Enable a Single Sign-On login process with LMS integrations - The average person’s attention span is about 8 seconds.6 A Single Sign-on (SSO) integration enables a quicker sign-on login process, delivering a user experience that encourages workers to more frequently log onto an LMS and interact with training. 

Needing to sign onto an LMS multiple times a day and remember a number of passwords for different applications can reduce user adoption of an LMS system. Complicated password roadblocks may decrease training participation and learner engagement. Since receiving quality training is key to employee satisfaction, it’s helpful for administrators to utilize SSO integrations for their LMS system. 

Single Sign-On also has security- and compliance-related benefits. “SSO reduces the number of attack surfaces because users only log in once each day and only use one set of credentials,” explained One Login.7 “Reducing login to one set of credentials improves enterprise security. When employees have to use separate passwords for each app, they usually don’t. In fact, 59% use the same or similar passwords on multiple accounts. Thus, if a hacker gets access through one poorly secured website, they are likely to be able to access other corporate systems.”

One Login also explained that SSO helps with regulatory compliance. 

Use TOPYX LMS System to Increase Learner/Employee Engagement 

Employee engagement is important. It leads to better team performance, productivity, and staff retention. It also lowers staff turnover, helps teams reach their objectives, lowers absenteeism, helps prevent stress in the workplace, and more.8  

With the right LMS system, organizational leaders can effectively increase learner engagement, which can lead to higher rates of employee engagement. 

TOPYX, a fully hosted, full-featured LMS system, features LMS integrations that make it easy for users to adopt the platform and regularly participate in training. The TOPYX LMS mobile learning feature is also beneficial for organizations that want to boost engagement. 

eLearning Industry stated that organizational leaders should leverage mobile learning to increase learner engagement:

“Users are most likely unmotivated to go out of their way to hunt down training. If you want user engagement, you have to meet them where they are. Both in a physical sense and in an emotional sense, mobile platforms are how you can reach users.”9

TOPYX LMS mobile learning allows learners to access on-demand content and interact with it any time, from any place. With features like LMS integrations and mobile learning, TOPYX LMS system puts tools for creating engaging employee training right at administrators’ fingertips. 

Interested in deploying TOPYX LMS system? Request a free LMS demo of TOPYX to get started.  

References: 

  1. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/352949/employee-engagement-holds-steady-first-half-2021.aspx#:~:text=Line%20graph.-,36%25%20of%20U.S.%20employees%20are%20engaged,while%2015%25%20are%20actively%20disengaged
  2. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/209123/seasonally-adjusted-monthly-number-of-employees-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%20November%202021%2C%20about%20155.18,employed%20in%20the%20United%20States
  3. Tolman and Wiker. http://tolmanandwiker.com/employee-engagement-direct-impact-business-bottom-line/
  4. HR Cloud. https://www.hrcloud.com/blog/8-employee-engagement-statistics-you-need-to-know-in-2021#:~:text=Employee%20Disengagement%20Costs%20the%20U.S.%20Economy%20%24450%2D550%20Billion%20Every%20Year!,-A%20study%20on
  5. The Access Group. https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/blog/dlc-tips-for-delivering-webinar-training/
  6. Orlando Sentinel. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-op-attention-span-dwindling-20210706-rwv2owqhezbp5hkmyqqtpmiq4u-story.html
  7. One Login. https://www.onelogin.com/learn/why-sso-important.
  8. Office Vibe. https://officevibe.com/blog/employee-engagement-benefits.  
  9. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/leveraging-mobile-learning-to-increase-engagement

 

 

 



Debbie Williams

Debbie Williams

Director, Marketing