r/Training

I (29f) started at this admin role at an accounting firm about 7 months ago. When i started there was three admin. One quit in January because she had family issues. The other one out in her two weeks right before the end of tax season and didn’t tell me. I didn’t find out until the morning that she didn’t show up to work and she was already done. That drama aside, i find myself alone doing three people’s jobs with one temp person who helps with the front desk. I want to completely redo the training because my training was terrible and i found out i have learned how to do some things incorrectly. What are some things that you have seen that have really happened you learn a new job? I have started a binder that better lays out the tasks expected but i would like to be a good resource to the people we are going to hire. They may or may not have any experience in being an admin. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance to those who will contribute.

Context: In this region, 900 out of 1,000 people are "Basic" certified, and 600 are "Top Level" certified.

While the numbers are high, quality is below average—especially at the top level. This stems from annual targets that prioritize volume over quality and fair assessment.

Current Format: Training is LMS-based, mixing e-learning and classroom sessions, ending with an objective-style test. Each country has a trainer whom I manage remotely as the Regional Trainer.The

Challenge: Since this is technical training requiring practical skills, how can I remotely improve the knowledge of these 600 experts and prove that improvement to management?

Note: This is my own initiative, not a formal requirement.

We've got a growing company with about 100 employees now and we're looking to upgrade our compliance training platform as we scale. We currently have something in place but it's not really meeting our needs anymore. We need something more robust that can handle our growth and actually keep employees engaged with the training. We want to make sure our policies and procedures stay solid and up to date, and that we have reliable tracking so compliance doesn't become a headache down the road. I've got a good handle on the HR side but we'd rather invest in the right tool than keep patching things together.

Anyone using a compliance training platform they'd actually recommend? Would love to hear what's working well for others.

Hot take that's going to annoy people here: the LMS is the next thing to go.

The authoring tools are already on the way out. A Claude account and an experimental mindset gets you better eLearning output in a fraction of the time and cost of the traditional tools. The vendors know it too — their response has been half measures. Articulate code block (el oh el).

But that's the boring take. Here's the one nobody wants to say out loud.

The LMS is next.

The whole model was built around one use case: proving to a compliance auditor that Dave finished his induction. SCORM in, completion data out, tick the box. We built a multi-billion dollar industry on Dave's certificate. And most L&D teams have been quietly drowning in the overhead ever since.

Learners are already voting with their feet. They'll abandon an LMS portal the moment they have to reset a password to access a 10-minute module. You already know this. The completion rates tell you everything.

And here's the thing — everything an LMS does is now buildable without a vendor in the loop. Tracking, compliance records, engagement data, assignment workflows, sign-offs, API connections. What used to justify a five-figure annual licence is a few weeks of project work now.

The LMS was never a product. It was a capability gap.

But here's the part that matters most for anyone actually working in training right now.

AI is changing who enters the workforce and what they already know. The junior foundational skills we used to spend the first year teaching are being handled by AI before people walk through the door. That means training needs to get more specific, more niche, and faster to produce. When something shifts — a new process, a regulation change, a restructure — you want a module ready next week, not next year.

We're going to need more training, not less. Just nothing the traditional stack was ever built to deliver.

Tell me I'm wrong?

I’ve been looking at LMS platforms from the perspective of professional training companies, and the usual comparison lists do not help much.

Most of them are written for internal HR or L&D teams managing employee training. That is a very different use case from selling courses, certification programs, or continuing education to external clients.

For training companies, the requirements usually look different:

White labeling, separate client portals, certification management, B2B e-commerce, client-level reporting, cohort management, and support for live or blended delivery.

Those are not minor add-ons. They are core operating requirements.

Here are a few LMS platforms I think are worth looking at for professional training companies:

1. Thought Industries

Probably one of the strongest platforms for external training businesses. It is built around customer education, certification, branded academies, multi-tenancy, and e-commerce. It can be expensive and implementation may be heavy, but if external training is your core business and budget is not a major constraint, it is one of the benchmarks.

2. Docebo

Enterprise-grade and polished. Strong reporting, integrations, automation, and support for multiple audiences. It can work well for larger training organizations, but pricing and configuration can scale quickly. Better suited for teams that have the resources to run a proper implementation.

3. Absorb LMS

Clean UX, solid e-commerce capabilities, and a good fit for companies selling training to business clients. Absorb Infuse is also interesting if you want to embed learning into another portal or product experience. Worth considering if you want something reliable without going too custom.

4. Blend-ed

Blend-ed is built on Open edX and is aimed at professional training companies delivering certified programs to external clients. It is stronger for teams that need branded learning environments, certification workflows, blended delivery, and AI-assisted course creation without moving into the pricing range of larger enterprise platforms.

It is probably not the right fit if you want a very lightweight plug-and-play LMS with almost no setup.

5. LearnUpon

Strong for training multiple audiences from one platform. Separate branded portals, certification workflows, and good customer support are often mentioned as strengths. The per-learner pricing model can work well at smaller volumes, but external training companies should check how the numbers look as learner count grows.

6. Tovuti

Less talked about than some of the others, but worth a look for training companies that need interactive content and continuing education delivery. It has built-in content creation features, events, and engagement tools. I would test reporting carefully, because that seems to be a mixed area in some user feedback.

Not every platform here will fit every training business. The right choice depends on your learner volume, client structure, certification needs, reporting expectations, customization requirements, and budget.

Curious to hear from people actually selling training to external clients.

What LMS are you using, and what has worked or failed in real-world delivery?

Hello, I recently interviewed for a Learning and Development Specialist role and I received the call back for a 2nd round interview. I have been asked to prepare a 10-15 minute presentation on the following.

1. Why a great onboarding experience matters.

2. What it looks like to set the right tone from day one.

Any advise is greatly appreciated.

I would love to hear what other L&D professionals workflow looks like as far as trainings go? Is your training team simply you by yourself or is it a team of people? I’d also like to know if you are the sole person responsible for creating the training schedule for the year? If trainings are your primary responsibility, how many trainings do you do in a year’s time or a month’s time?

I ask these questions because my company has never had L&D professional before me. I find myself having to do a lot of the grunt work that I don’t think I should be doing especially because I work at a nonprofit organization. I am being asked to work on several projects at a time, although my title says that I am the trainer.

I brought this up in my annual performance evaluation, and I did communicate the fact that my title needs to change because it is not reflective of the work that I’m actually doing because the truth is I’m doing way more than just trainings. However, I want to focus on the training aspect for now.

I've been tracking when engagement drops during full-day sessions and the pattern is painfully consistent: 13:00-14:00 is a dead zone. No matter how good the content is, the room checks out after lunch.

Things I've tried to fix it:

- Starting with something competitive right after lunch instead of content — a 10-minute group game on phones (I use Games for Crowds for this) resets the energy faster than jumping straight back into slides

- Shorter content blocks in the afternoon (20 min instead of 30)

- Standing activities or room movement before sitting back down

- Putting the most interactive content in the afternoon and the lecture-heavy stuff in the morning

Some of this has worked, some hasn't. Curious what the rest of you do. Is the post-lunch crash just something you accept and plan around, or have you actually solved it?

Been experimenting with replacing traditional end-of-module quizzes with live group games during training. Here's what's been working:

- The 30/10 rule. 30 minutes of content, 10 minutes of interactive play. The game isn't filler but it's your formative assessment disguised as competition.

- Make scores visible. A private quiz creates zero accountability. A live leaderboard on screen? People suddenly pay attention to the content because they don't want to come last in front of colleagues.

- Rotate formats. Same quiz format repeated all day kills engagement even with great content. Alternate between timed quizzes, word challenges, visual recognition, true/false speed rounds.

- Warm up then challenge. Start easy so everyone buys in. Save the hardest round for after lunch when energy is lowest.

- Debrief the results. The learning doesn't happen during the game - it happens in the 2-minute discussion after about what most people got wrong.

I've been using a free platform called Games for Crowds ( gamesforcrowds.com ) to run these, but the framework works with any tool that supports live group play with visible scoring.

Happy to answer questions about adapting this for different setups.

There are too many LMS platforms to count right now. So much so that I actually fall asleep when a software sales rep for [insert top 30 LMS platform here] talks his/her head off about what XYZ can do.

They all seem the same to me. Each use case seems more or less the same, whether it's delivering to a bunch of learners, expanding reach, making it easier, etc.

What truly makes an LMS different from another? Why did you choose your current LMS over another? Please make my search a little easier.

Why am I asking this? My CLO is making me find *drumroll please* yet another LMS to fix it because training roi has slumped yet again. He blames the technology again. I'm gonna be really excited to find out that the only thing that changed was the color of the UX inside the LMS. I almost want to go back to traditional ILT at this rate

We do live roleplay sessions for our sales and support teams and I’m starting to question the whole format.

Managers don’t have time to run sessions consistently so it’s always last minute and uneven. Plus half the employees are embarrassed to practice in front of coworkers and the rest are just going through the motions.

I know practice matters but the way we’re doing it right now just doesn’t seem to be working. Has anyone found a way to make this work better/feel less cringe? How do you prep sales for customer facing conversation ?

Hello!

I am a Learning and Development Coordinator working for a city government agency. I am attending the upcoming ATD conference. One of the priorities of my agency is to shortlist LMS companies to implement into our agency. My agency has around 200 staff members. Currently, we have varieties of trainings hosted in many different spots. My goal with the LMS is to institutionalize agency knowledge and move all our compliance requirements to one place.

I hope to meet with vendors at the Expo to get a bit more of an idea of what I am looking for. My question is, what questions should I be asking? I am aware I am going into this a little blind, so please be kind :)

(Also if you are going to the conference, let me know what sessions you are excited for)

Hey fellow trainers, looking for some advice.

I got into training at a large company without a formal background in it, I was hired based on interviews, not a training career path. Before that, I worked in communications and some graphic design (also self taught because my company had a small budget).

I’ve been training for almost 5 years now, and I recently moved to a different organization within the same company. The learning curve was honestly pretty rough, but I’m starting to feel more confident in the role and in how I teach.

Now I’m thinking about getting certified in adult training to grow more in this field. At the same time, I feel like design comes more naturally to me, and I’d love to explore that further too.

Has anyone here gotten certified after already working as a trainer? Was it worth it? Any certifications or courses you’d recommend