What If My Company Already Has an LMS?

First things first . . . we’re not here to replace your current learning management system!  

BuildWitt Training is an additional resource that’s meant to help you level up your training program. So we don’t want you to chuck your old LMS out the window (unless it's not giving you what you need—then go for it). 

Anyway, let’s get down to the real question: why would you want BuildWitt Training in addition to your current LMS? 

There are five main reasons: 

1. Get training content your LMS doesn’t have
2. Increase engagement
3. Go beyond bare-minimum compliance
4. Deliver content to the whole team
5. Manage training easily 

Let’s take a closer look at each one.

1. Get training content your LMS doesn't have

Recently, a Canadian company told us they didn’t want to leave their LMS, because it gives them access to content that BuildWitt Training doesn’t offer. 

You know what we told them? 

“Don’t break what’s working!” 

You bought your existing LMS for a reason, and you probably need it for certain types of training that are specific to your location or work. 

But the reverse is also true. At BuildWitt, we develop necessary training content that traditional LMS overlook.

For example, most LMS for heavy civil, construction, and mining focus on compliance and safety. But they typically don’t have content that helps develop crew members professionally and personally.

BuildWitt Training does. Some of our content includes:

• Industry knowledge for heavy civil, construction, aggregate mining, and paving so newer workers can learn the big picture
•  Skill training for key roles like foremen, field supervisors, grade checkers, laborers, heavy equipment operators, and pipelayers
• Our Leadership learning plan with 100+ lessons to help current leaders level up their skills and prepare future leaders to step into those roles 
• Personal development like lessons on mental health and personal finance so you can help people become their best in every part of their lives, not just their work

Explore the course catalog to preview all of our training content.

2. Increase engagement 

Many companies struggle with low engagement for their LMS—especially if it only offers compliance training that people use once or twice a year. 

The problem is, you pay for it year-round. That’s not an effective spend. 

We want you to get more bang for your buck, so we designed BuildWitt Training to encourage daily engagement. 

How does that work? We’re glad you asked.

Modern videos

Raise your hand if you’re sick of grainy, outdated training film strips. Yeah, us too!

We use modern, high-quality production, so our videos don’t look like they were filmed on a camera made from a potato. 

Our videos also show real people on real job sites. Your crew will get to learn by watching people who dress like them, talk like them, and use the same equipment as them. 

And while you might see an epic 3D rendering of an excavator, we don’t use any corny cartoons. Your crew members are adults, and they deserve to be treated like it.

Subject matter experts

We work with dozens of subject matter experts (SMEs) with decades of experience in the industry. They help us develop every BuildWitt Training lesson and appear in much of the content. 

That means your crew can learn from people who know what they’re talking about because they actually do it day in and day out.

Learn more about what the BuildWitt Training SMEs.

Microlearning

Microlearning is a highly effective education strategy. It uses short, digestible content to make training easier to remember.1 

Most BuildWitt Training lessons are five minutes or less. Many also end with a one-question quiz, so you can ensure your crew pays attention without giving them test anxiety.

Since our training content is so short, your people can watch it whenever they want—during a morning toolbox talk, on their lunch break, or even as a quick, on-the-job refresher before they perform a task.

They can also watch each lesson as many times as they want—at no extra cost to you. We encourage unlimited viewing because studies show that reviewing material for ten minutes or less each week increases retention.² 

More retention means people apply more of their training in the field. This increases productivity and creates a safer work environment.

3. Go beyond bare-minimum compliance training

Many LMS are only set up to deliver compliance training

It’s great that they’re meeting a critical need . . . but it’s not great when all you’re getting out of an LMS is check-the-box safety content. 

Safety is more than compliance. Your people are safest when they gain new technical skills to do their jobs better, learn soft skills to work better as a team and develop an ownership mindset to hold them accountable. 

BuildWitt Training does offer OSHA, MSHA, and HAZWOPER-certified courses for U.S. customers. But it also takes your people way beyond government-mandated compliance courses. 

It gives them 800+ lessons on topics that improve safety, including:

• Technical skills training so they know how to do the tasks of their job effectively, without getting anyone hurt
• Soft skills training that’ll help them work well as a team so they can be more productive and take ownership of their work—no more blaming mistakes on others
• Safety basics like PPE, how to be a spotter, caring for themselves mentally, and more

And they’ll get all this from people who take safety seriously but still have their sense of humor intact (unlike typical safety training. Yeesh.) 

This well-rounded approach to safety training goes far beyond compliance, and it does far more to reduce crew mistakes and improve safety on the job. 

That said, think of your LMS as a compliance tool. Think of BuildWitt Training as a way to step up your compliance while giving your people a simple app to help them grow. 

4. Deliver quality content to the whole team

Often, companies don’t deliver their LMS to hourly field workers; it’s foremen and up because training the whole crew is too hard or too expensive. So, the content isn’t reaching everybody.

That’s a real problem. You can have the best-trained field leaders in the world, but that doesn’t matter if their crews aren’t equipped to properly execute the work.

With BuildWitt Training, you can deliver content to the whole team for a reasonable price.

Content distribution

BuildWitt Training helps you deliver content to the whole team through a simple-to-use app that they can access on their phones. This is how you reach the people who don’t have or don’t check company email.

You can invite every crew member to BuildWitt Training by text, so it’s easy for them to get started. 

Then, you can assign them lessons with the click of a button. They’ll get a notification on their phones, and they can go watch their new assignments right there in the mobile app.

Additionally, you can upload and assign custom training content to teach your people technical skills, processes, and core values unique to your company. This makes it easy to store and share your way of working in one central location.

Cost

BuildWitt Training has a flat annual fee starting at $5,000, based on your company size. The more people you have, the more bang for your buck, because training the whole team should be affordable no matter how big your company gets.

For that price, your people can access our entire content library of 1500+ videos. They’ll also get total access to any custom content you upload. (Uploads are free and unlimited.)

Your employees can watch as many lessons as they want, as many times as they want. They can even self-assign content above and beyond what you’ve given them to do. And it’s all for free. 

That’s it. No hidden fees, no “credits.” 

See what BuildWitt Training would cost you.

5. Manage training easily

An LMS is designed to help your crew learn, but not every LMS is designed for admins to manage training easily. For that, you need a training management system (TMS). 

BuildWitt Training has both LMS and TMS capabilities, so admins can do everything in one central location (no more messy spreadsheets!). 

Here are a few of the helpful TMS features you’ll find in BuildWitt Training:

• Analytics let you easily track training progress and data. Get insight into what content people are engaging with the most. Plus, see at a glance who’s completed their training assignments, who’s working on them, and who’s not training at all. 

• With the groups feature, you can assign training to an entire group of people at once. You can also set a group leader and let them assign the content their people need. When you add a new person to the group, the software will automatically assign the right content to them, so you don’t have to. 

• The supervisor's feature gives your leaders ownership. Simply set them as a Supervisor, and they’ll be able to track and assign training for anyone who reports up to them.

Is it worth buying BuildWitt Training when we already have an LMS?

The short answer is, most likely, yes . . . but not always. 

Think of it like heavy equipment. You pay for a dozer and an excavator when you need them both. You use each machine to do different jobs that the other machine isn’t made to do. 

In the same way, different software gives you different tools for training and educating your team. You may very well need them both, or you may just need one.

However you slice it, you must get a good return on your investment in order to consider any training software worthwhile. (After all, you wouldn’t buy a $300,000 dozer if you only needed it for a three-month project.)

It’s important to weigh the ROI for your LMS, BuildWitt Training, and the two together. That'll help you decide whether to keep your LMS, replace it, or add BuildWitt Training to the mix.

To help you determine whether your LMS and/or BuildWitt Training are worth the cost, check out these resources:

• What’s the ROI on Training Management? Find out how to calculate the ROI for a specific training tool or your overall training program.
• What’s the ROI on BuildWitt Training? Take a deep dive into the cost of our software—and how you can tell if it’s worthwhile for you to buy.
  

Takeaways

You’re using your current LMS for a reason, and it’s helped you get through a lot of training—especially compliance. So if it's working for you, you don't have to replace it entirely. 

Buildwitt Training is an additional resource to help you take your people and your business to the next level. Watch the helpful preview video below to get a taste of our training content and see if it could be right for your team.

Last but not least, find out how companies like yours are using BuildWitt Training. That’ll give you a better idea of how you can make it work for your team and whether it’s a wise spend for you.