Change Management Strategies for LMS Implementation

Three factors that are important to change management when implementing a Learning Management System (LMS);

1. Buy-in
2. Communication
3. Organization

All three come down to making the employee feel safe about the change that is occurring. If management resists the transition into your new LMS then employees will not feel as though it is a priority. If the change is not well communicated, they will feel as though they were not considered when the change was planned and implemented. Lastly, if the project is not well organized, this will be apparent to your employee audience and they will lose faith in its legitimacy.

When change management is not taken into consideration we are left with employees who feel the change is a low priority, ignored their consideration, and lacks organization. Each of these factors will lead to lower adoption rates among employees. If training is a requirement of the organization, employees may even begin to resent the change that has been forced on them. Again, this all comes down to employee’s feeling safe and comfortable.

Three best practices to meet these challenges include:

1. Encourage manager involvement and feedback in the implementation process, and student involvement in testing groups.
2. In the project plan set milestones for company-wide communications to go out at the inception of the project, midway through, and before the blackout/go live period.
3. Regularly review and modify the project to fit the business needs of your organization. Get your implementation leader to provide progress reports to keep everyone on track and organized during the implementation.