I admit it, my tip for reducing capital expenses in my posting ‘Kicking the Monkey‘ wasn’t very glamorous.   But that’s OK, life in the trench isn’t glamorous.  It’s muddy down here, and if you have to be looking for ways to grind it out to get the job done. With that in mind, as Emeril says, it’s time to add a little BAM! with some more ways to leverage that LMS.

On Boarding

With luck, your organization too is hiring new people.  When you do, you have to run them through what ever version of new hire orientation takes.  As part of that, you inevitability have to have your new employees complete their W-4’s, sing their code of conduct and what ever other paperwork you need to have them complete.

If you set up each of these tasks as a class in your LMS, even routing them to the online forms or PDF’s to fill out and sing if need be, you can get them checked off and tracked.  You can capture your code of conduct signature right in your LMS as well.  Since most organizations want a to have employees sign their code of conduct each year, you can set that up for renewal in your LMS as well (we’ll call that tip number 3).

How much will this save you?  That depends on how complex your current process is and how you manage it.  If you’re dealing with it all by having someone sit down with each new hire and go through a pile of papers, and you have a high volume of new hires, it could be significant.

Open Enrollment

What are the challenges of OE?  In a compressed time frame, you need to distribute the information on benefit plans and options to your employees and then walk them through the registration process allowing them to select plans and options for health, dental, vision, life, etc.

Did you ever think about doing your open enrollment through your LMS?  Think of the savings you would realize by distributing You can capture all the data you need from your work force through your LMS and you can teach your employees about their benefits at the same time, which will reduce costly time spent answering employee questions about their benefits.  According to the DOL website, ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act), which regulates a laundry list of health and savings benefit plans, requires that notification be delivered to the employees timely.  By providing the information electronically through your LMS, you’ll not only be able to avoid the printing and mailing cost, but you’ll be able to log when employees have received and reviewed their information.

What will this save you? It could easily be tens of thousands if not more, depending on the size of your organization.