What Is a Learning Management System (LMS)?

A learning management system (LMS) is a digital platform that helps your business create, deliver, and track training programs.

It's your company's central hub for all things learning and development, most often used to deliver onboarding, compliance training, upskilling, and performance support to employees.

Have employees across the globe? LMS platforms are especially valuable for globally distributed teams that need standardized training processes across regions. Instead of juggling scattered training materials, scheduling training sessions across time zones, or manually tracking who's completed what, an LMS streamlines the entire process inside of one cloud-based system.

An LMS is the modern solution that transforms traditional training headaches into scalable, measurable learning experiences that actually stick, regardless of where your employees live.

What's under the hood of a great LMS?

Modern LMS platforms pack powerful features that transform scattered training efforts into streamlined learning machines. Key features include:

• Course authoring and content libraries let you build everything from quick video tutorials to comprehensive certification programs within the platform, while storing unlimited materials in one searchable hub.
• Progress tracking and reporting tools give you real-time visibility into who's completing what, where knowledge gaps exist, and how your training investment is paying off.
• Assessment and certification modules automate testing and credentialing. Goodbye, pen-and-paper tests!
• Mobile and multilingual access for international teams ensures your talent can learn wherever, whenever, in their preferred language.
• Integration with human resource information systems (HRIS) or employee onboarding platforms means new hires automatically get enrolled in onboarding courses without any clunky manual handoffs between systems.

If an LMS is right for you

Question: Do you routinely need to onboard, train, or upskill your employees?

Q: Do they need to take compliance courses?

Q: Are some of them remote?

Q: Are some of them in another country?

If you answered yes to one or more, consider using an LMS. For onboarding, a learning management system eliminates the logistical nightmare of delivering consistent training globally. Imagine onboarding new hires in Tokyo, Mumbai, and São Paulo with the same high-quality content-without flying trainers around the world or worrying about language barriers.

That said, trainers still play a crucial role in delivering learning. But with an LMS, you no longer have to rely on them to onboard or train each new employee. Instead, you can quickly scale learning across geographies as your organization grows.

Beyond cost savings, a learning management system is your secret weapon for maintaining compliance across different jurisdictions. Healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and other highly regulated industries often require organizations to ensure that their employees stay up to date on the latest regulations and best practices.

An LMS ensures every employee gets the same safety training or regulatory updates regardless of whether they're working from a corporate office in Berlin or logging on from a coffee shop in Marseille. (Although, should your employee be taking a compliance course using public Marseillese WiFi?)

Other LMS perks

• Insight into your talent. When used effectively, a learning management system becomes your internal talent pipeline. Use the LMS to track employee skills, learning progress, and competency development across departments. It will give you the data to identify who's ready for that next role before you post it externally.
• Employee retention. Instead of losing employees to competitors when they hit career plateaus, you can offer clear learning pathways in the LMS that help them grow into leadership positions, specialized roles, or entirely new functions. Voila! Potential turnover is transformed into strategic talent mobility.

Choose the right LMS: 6 tips

TalentLMS or Docebo? Litmos or Moodle? Selecting the right LMS for your international team is not merely a matter of comparing features.

Take these steps to pick a learning management system that will work for you and not the other way around:

1. Define your primary use cases and learning objectives. Whether that's compliance training across multiple jurisdictions, onboarding remote hires in different time zones, or developing internal talent pipelines across continents.
2. Assess language and localization capabilities. Ensure the platform supports not just translation but cultural adaptation of content for different regions. This means more than just switching languages, but tailoring examples, scenarios, and learning approaches to local contexts.
3. Evaluate integration requirements. Does the LMS play nicely with your existing HRIS, payroll systems, and communication tools? It will make your life a lot easier if it does. Data flow between platforms eliminates administrative headaches and helps make sure you have consistent employee records.
4. Test scalability and performance. Make sure that it can handle your current user load while accommodating growth across new markets. How does it work on mobile (and does that matter to you)?
5. Examine reporting and analytics capabilities. Ensure you can track compliance, measure learning outcomes, and generate the specific reports that different stakeholders (HR folks, auditors, people managers, etc.) commonly request.
6. Conduct user testing. Let real employees from different regions and with technical comfort levels try out the software. Even the most feature-rich platform is worthless if your team won't actually use it!

Grow without the growing pains

Focus your energy where it counts: training your talent. And leave the rest (i.e., complex employment logistics) to us. We're Pebl, an Employer of Record service, and our zone of genius is giving you the infrastructure to find, onboard, and pay talent across 185+ countries.

Let's talk about how we can streamline your international operations and give you back the time to create a borderless learning culture that scales.

Disclaimer: This information does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or tax advice and is for general informational purposes only. The intent of this document is solely to provide general and preliminary information for private use. Do not rely on it as an alternative to legal, financial, taxation, or accountancy advice from an appropriately qualified professional. The content in this guide is provided "as is," and no representations are made that the content is error-free.

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