Microsoft 365 - The better LMS?

Microsoft 365 is very successful because it offers a comprehensive digital work platform on which individuals and teams as well as entire organisations can communicate and collaborate. With its countless apps and integrations, it offers a solution for almost every requirement. Can M365 also function as a learning environment and thus replace a learning management system?

Depending on the provider, the functions of learning management systems vary. And just like M365, many of them have a lot of features that are needed for learning; or not. Learning management systems provide employees with learning content, training programmes and exchange opportunities and can be efficiently managed by HR (development) departments. As long as a company follows a traditional approach to education, training and development, learning management systems can be a useful complement to face-to-face formats or a stand-alone learning platform.

However, the demands of employees, new work structures and more individual learning needs due to rapid changes are pushing classic LMSs to their performance limits.

Because these platforms for learning cannot follow the most relevant development of the new, agile corporate and learning culture, #newlearning, in 2020: Work = Learning = Work

Companies are increasingly pursuing the goal of organically and naturally merging working and learning in everyday life. HR development on the one hand, but also managers with their teams on the other, no longer rely on face-to-face formats in the post-Corona era. And learning management systems are, from their point of view, conceivably far removed from a digital working environment.

Microsoft 365 offers itself as a technical platform for working and learning in equal measure. Learning integrates directly into the everyday work, communication and collaboration of individuals and teams and can thus become a new learning environment.

Should we now do away with our Learning Management System and switch to M365?

No. At least not yet. It is true that the most common features of a learning management system can also be mapped by M365. But that alone does not justify the immense technical effort that HR and the IT department have to make, depending on the organisation, the number of employees, the amount of content, the licensing and rights situation for purchased content, and the range of formats that are to be newly mapped in M365.

The effort also arises on a strategic and conceptual level. In fact, at the beginning of the decision whether to use a (new or existing) LMS or to switch to M365 or, if M365 has already been rolled out in the organisation, to set up the extension of the platform for corporate learning, there is a very simple but more difficult question to answer:

The analysis of the current state of learning and the derivation of an innovative, sustainable vision (target state) of how learning and work should be done in the future, which fits the DNA of the own organisation, forms the basis. Sometimes these conversations with relevant stakeholders lead to confirming insights that the previous concept of learning is working. Admittedly: this scenario will increasingly reveal that too little innovative power and courage is being developed in the organisation and that the disruptive changes brought about by the digital transformation and New Work are being ignored.

Organisations that want to be successful in the future will therefore sooner or later come to new approaches that quickly reveal the limitations of a classic LMS. When working and learning increasingly complement each other, so that they even merge in everyday work, it quickly becomes clear that a sustainable learning culture requires more than just technical equipment. It requires rather agile mindsets of employees and teams, fresh and flexible ideas of HR developers who change their role from training controllers to learning facilitators, as well as work structures that enable learning with AND without technical platforms; always when the need arises: in the process of work.

If my organisation defines a holistic, agile vision of workplace learning, does the choice of platform become a secondary issue?

No, because the increasingly digital working and learning processes are a huge opportunity to create synergies. Of course, a technical platform can support this, e.g. by sharing content in a team for working and learning in one place. And this is where M365 can play out all its advantages and thus not be a replacement for the previous learning management system, but much more. It has the tools that modern learning needs, which are immediately and intuitively applicable for many users due to their seamless integration:

• Plan and complete tasks,

• Make information accessible and find it quickly,

• Develop ideas and solutions together,

• Collaborate and communicate,

• Collect, structure, store and share information,

• And much more...

However, the rollout of M365 as a digital work platform is a complex challenge and should therefore be planned throughout the organisation. It is therefore not enough for the IT department to carry out the technical implementation, but the employees must also learn about the advantages of M365 and be carried along in the introduction and use of the platform. So they should learn how to use M365. But not only that: if the introduction of M365 is imminent, it can be worthwhile for the HR department, in cooperation with IT, management, internal communications and the works council (if there is one) and others, to reflect at the same time on whether and how not only the use of M365 is learned so that the acquisition is also profitable and the platform is used as desired, but also that learning can take place with and in M365.