The Importance & Benefits of a Learning Experience Platform (LXP)

For many years, the learning management system (LMS) was the standard software used for organizations to deliver, track, and report on employee training programs. However, today the market is trending towards the newest development in learning software; the LXP. This trend towards businesses adopting the LXP as their new learning software is due to the LXP being more customizable, more engaging, and offering a user-centric experience.

LXPs are seen as the evolution of an LMS. The LMS did many things well, such as storing and delivering online courses, administering online training, and compiling data about employee training progress. However, it failed to create an engaging learning experience that made employees want to keep coming back to the platform – hence the LXP was born. The LXP aspires to make employees feel engaged with the learning experience, with each other, and with their employer’s brand by offering a host of social and community features that develop a multi-dimensional experience. By contrast, the LMS delivers a one-way stream of information: Company to employee. The expanded learning and engagement elements of a LXP creates a high-return learning experience that benefits companies and their employees in any industry.

A great LXP solution can go beyond learning to consolidate software as well. The by-product of engagement is usage! If your people actually like to use the solution, you can turn your LXP into a company intranet. Not only can they learn, but they can use it as the one source of truth for your brand — a community that’s theirs and yours. That’s one of the main differences from a traditional LMS. The LXP is a multi-stream of information and communication: Company to employee, employee to company, employee to employee, etc.

The market for LXP solutions is growing substantially with higher levels of investment in these platforms. This is due to the many benefits that businesses get by implementing a LXP within L&D and broader people strategies. Some of the unique benefits are: 

• Advanced content & social tracking to manage employee performance
• Better employee & customer retention
• Increased employee performance
• Peer-to-peer engagement 
• Improved employee morale
• More consistent & trackable communications across the entire business
• Stronger brand alliance
• Cross-functional & cross-department connections

Each of these benefits have a direct impact on business performance and employee well-being, making a LXP an excellent software solution to implement across an organization.

Advanced Tracking

LXPs offer advanced content and social tracking that allows business managers to track data from a variety of sources. This allows access to additional information such as learner social and core content activity, how employees learn, and the ability to assess how learners are absorbing information. Tracking this data can help companies optimize training programs to realize ROI and learning and development goals. 

Better Customer Retention

Customer service is a vital part of any organization as it leads to client retention, increased profits, and the building of a strong reputation. LXPs can support customer retention in two ways. First, by serving as your customer portal where you can deliver onboarding, product training, new feature announcements and more, to build a community of clients devoted to your brand and connected with each other. Second, the LXP can be a resources library, a best practice sharing hub, and a community-building intranet for your network of CX Reps. When everyone is leveled up and learning from each other, you’ll ensure a consistently high standard of service hard to achieve without a LXP solution. 

Increased Employee Performance & Retention

A LXP will create a successful training program that leads to better overall employee performance and retention. It encourages every employee to connect and work collectively, which builds team morale throughout the workplace and fosters a sense of community to keep workers engaged — and when workers are engaged — they tend to be connected to the brand and say longer at a company. Studies have shown that a community of collaborative workers will boost employee performance and retention significantly. According to a Stanford study, “participants who worked collaboratively stuck at their task 64% longer than their solitary peers, whilst also reporting higher engagement levels, lower fatigue levels, and a higher success rate.” This data shows why using LXP software for employee training is so successful; helping employees feel engaged within the workplace will lead to higher levels of sustained success. 

Social Features That Create Engagement

LXPs aim to be social platforms that create opportunities for an engaging workplace environment that will lead to increased employee morale and better teamwork. For virtual employees, the presence of a social and communication features can be extremely beneficial for helping them feel connected to the wider organization. The same goes for connecting managers and employees across locations around the country, or even world, to build brand affinity and deliver unique customer experiences. 

LXPs offer enhanced engagement features such as:

• Points systems for gamification
• Likes, comments, shares for peer-to-peer engagement
• Merits, rewards & certificates
• Enhanced user profiles 
• Customizable pages
• Enhanced communication features
• Content curation to put learners in the drivers seat

These are all excellent tools for keeping employees feeling engaged and interacting with their co-workers effectively. 

Consistent & Trackable Communications 

LXPs offer a range of communication features beyond comments, likes, and shares that improve transparency, offer efficiencies for large group communications, and encourage feedback and engagement more readily than email chains. Consistent communications that encourage multi-way engagement are more likely to be read, absorbed, and acted on — especially when you can track engagement and offer easy-to-access archives for re-referencing purposes. 

Brand Alliance

Creating and maintaining employee, partner, and sales communities that are enthusiastic and dedicated to your brand is critical for differentiating a company in the market. LXPs help generate brand alliance by creating spaces for people to connect and share their experiences, and grow together alongside the business. Social features that encourage employees to share, help connect workers to the brand, and feel like contributors to success – thereby driving ownership and commitment in the long term. 

Cross-Departmental Connection

LXP feature sets are designed to facilitate site exploration, content discovery, and sharing. As such, an LXP can facilitate digital water-cooler moments and cross departmental connection and recognition that support collaborative teamwork and level-up learning for all involved. When a LXP is leveraged to provide company communications, all-department updates and the public recognition of employee success, organizations will find themselves with a more transparent workplace filled with employees who know how to find SMEs and the information to answer questions themselves.

Along with benefiting a business as a whole, a LXP can also benefit employees in many different ways leading to better employee well-being and increased loyalty to the company.

Employee benefits are:

• Better employee morale
• Engaging, personalized learning experiences
• Sense of belonging and connection with peers
• Increased job satisfaction

All of these benefits lead to employees having higher rates of success in the workplace, a better learning experience, and being more satisfied in their departments and roles. 

Increased Employee Morale

Business executives are seeing an increasing need to focus on employee morale and well-being. An article from Josh Bersin Academy shows that employee well-being is more important than ever in current HR trends. Deloitte’s 2020 Human Capital Trends survey stated, “of about 10,000 executives around the globe, well-being was rated as the most important issue on C-Level executives’ minds.” If you want to create a thriving workplace, you must keep in mind the importance of employee morale. Implementing a collaborative and engaging platform like, a LXP, will keep employees satisfied with their work environment and successful in their training and career growth programs. 

Increased Engagement with Training

Employees being engaged with their training programs benefits not only the company, but also the employees who are participating in the training program. LXP features help Learning and Development teams create engaging training programs that incorporate feedback loops, commenting, likes and sharing, and can cater to the unique learning needs of the individual. Many basic training programs used by companies can feel monotonous and lead to employees not getting the most benefit out of the information they are learning. Implementing a training program through a LXP will lead to higher information retention, employees who have a positive attitude about their work, and who show up ready and able to be productive.

Implementing a LXP will deliver tangible benefits across the board because its robust, customizable, and can satisfy a wide range of business needs across the organization. For success, look for a solution designed to look and feel like a consumer-based software than a dated training portal. This way,  employees will feel engaged with content and the company, and it will lead to them retaining more information from their learning programs. Employee morale and well-being will also increase throughout the workplace leading to higher levels of productivity, better customer service, and a more positive company culture.

With such a myriad of employee benefits and solutions to core business challenges, it’s hard not to argue for investment in such a powerful solution.