A performance learning management system (PLMS) allows organizations to address the topics of performance and learning in one platform. With a PLMS, leaders can continually assess and improve learners based on their specific company and role-based capabilities. 

More specifically, a performance learning management system (PLMS) is used by organizations in six core ways. 

1. Before learning: Discover, define, assess, and map organizational and role-based capabilities of your learners.  

2. Manage learning: Facilitate and manage all learning opportunities in a learner profile as the central system of record. This includes not just e-learning but extends to coaching, mentoring, and in-person courses. It also captures key interactions hidden within organizations, transforming them into shareable learning assets that promote knowledge exchange at scale. 

3. Assess learning: A PLMS goes beyond traditional LMS reporting (e.g., completions). It identifies and measures role-based capabilities to ensure alignment with organizational performance. 

4. Embedded performance management: At its core, this is the way you link learning and performance. Learning completion is only one aspect of performance. Demonstrating learning in real-world scenarios is how you close the loop on whether the learnings were applied. Leaders can assess proficiencies for each capability that a person is responsible for. The PLMS allows for a data-driven discussion with a historical progression of the learner’s evolution. These informed discussions enhance employee engagement and performance management while linking the chasm between people and company performance. 

5. Multi-stakeholder learning: Every organization needs to share knowledge externally (e.g., with customers/partners/members) and internally with employees. A PLMS should allow for specific learning portals to tailor the content and experience to the different groups. It’s costly to create and maintain multiple learning portals. Having one account that allows for many tenants the organization can decrease course management efforts, increase learner adoption, and show usage in one common analytics layer. With each stakeholder in one platform, linking progress and performance becomes possible.  

6. Workflow automation: Managing the measurement of learning and performance is hard. Leaders are forced into entering data into hundreds of spreadsheets and learners must try and see their learning history via these spreadsheets. A PLMS helps to automate the recommendation of learning, the assignment of role-specific capabilities, and the regular administration tasks of onboarding and maintaining a dynamic learning and performance-focused assessment process. Once a new learner enters the organization the PLMS should kick off initial and scheduled assessments so that leaders don’t need to remember to. 

Before learning 

The key point of difference? The focus on capabilities. A capability is defined as a combination of personal and technical skills, knowledge, processes, tools, and behaviors which are critical to an organization’s success and future needs. Skills form an important part of this (and skill-based organizations still use a PLMS), but while there is an acceptance that skills can be completed, the application of those skills needs to be demonstrated. The PLMS should allow the leaders to define and measure both capabilities and proficiencies. 

Manage learning 

The key point of difference is that while traditional LMSs focus on management and completion of e-learning, a PLMS captures this and the evaluation of the learnings.  

Assess learning 

A PLMS allows organizations to get a baseline assessment of their capability based on both the needs of the organization and defined roles. This allows you to link capability directly to learning assessments, whether it be informal interactions or formal training and e-learning. This then empowers organizations to assess effective learning and performance improvement.  

Embedded performance management 

With independent learning technology, you’ll experience data redundancy, inaccurate reporting and analytics, and difficulty having objective performance reviews. PLMSs fix this with one simple technology change: Embedding the performance conversation within the learning conversation.  

Multi-stakeholder learning 

High-performing organizations excel with all internal and external stakeholders, be these employees, leaders, shareholders, suppliers, partners, customers, and citizens. Legacy learning management systems deliver learning to some of these groups, but PLMSs serve all driving organizational stakeholders, enabling efficiency gains, streamlined operations, simplification, and—ultimately—high performance.

Workflow automation 

Again, high-performing organizations focus on the task at hand. To be high-performing, you should not have your enabling technologies across manual spreadsheets and forms or disparate, poorly integrated software. 

PLMS FAQs 

Want to know more about the specifics of a PLMS?

I have just started exploring capability building or am not yet ready. Is a PLMS right for me? 

Yes, many users of a PLMS use the core LMS as a starting point. This gives them all the benefits of legacy LMSs, plus the ability to capture all formats of learning and then the ability to scale up as learning maturity moves towards capability building. 

We’re heavily invested in and focused on building skills. Is a PLMS still right for me? 

The recent explosion of the skills-based organization and all the benefits this brings form a core part of a PLMS, not an either/or situation. PLMSs lead with capabilities as they are the only data-backed example of learning that impacts organizational performance. It is widely accepted that skills play an important part in driving performance, but cannot do so in isolation, hence the focus on capabilities. 

A PLMS allows you to take the definitions for your capabilities and proficiency definitions into the platform easily, so that you don’t have to confirm it with the PLMS provider. You’re also able to access a PLMS provider’s own capability library (and industry standards like SFIA) to help you get out of the gate quickly. 

I’ve been in organizational development, learning and development, and people development for a long time. How is this not just another marketing play on words? 

It’s a fair question, but the key is how a PLMS is built.

The R&D that goes into a provider of a PLMS must meet the six components of a PLMS.

1. Pre-learning 
2. Manage learning 
3. Assess learning 
4. Embedded performance management  
5. Multi-stakeholder learning 
6. Workflow automation.

Bringing it to life with examples: 

• If a supplier offers ‘manage learning’ and ‘assess learning’, they are the widely held and accepted definition of an LMS. 
• If they offer the assessment front-end, they are an assessment provider.
• If they offer ‘manage learning’, ‘assess learning’, and a separate ‘performance management’ module, even if API integrated, then they are an LMS and PMS provider (though still separate).  
• If they offer ‘manage learning’, ‘assess learning’, and ‘multi-stakeholder learning’ they are a traditional LMS for internal and external use cases. 

Therefore, when searching for a performance learning management system, you have your checklist as following.

• Can the provider enable us to discover, define, assess, and map the organizational and job role capabilities of our learners? 
• Can the provider enable us to facilitate and manage all learning opportunities in a learner profile as the central system of record? (This must include not just e-learning, but also coaching, mentoring, in-person courses, and captured interactions.)
• Can the provider deliver reporting of both learning metrics and reassessment of organizational and human capabilities of our learners? 
• Can the provider deliver performance management functionality within the software and without integration?  
• Can the provider deliver multi-tenant learning environments for different stakeholders?  
• Can the provider automate workflows, so the focus is on performance, not administration? 

The second answer to this question is the principles of the provider. The core principles and vision of the provider has to focus on improving performance. This is the guiding light for all product development decisions. If the provider’s focus, for example, on upskilling or learning management, then by definition they are not a PLMS. There is a place for all in the market; it is very much dependent on the business case of the customer. 

Where does a PLMS sit within my existing human resources technology set? 

PLMS is a sub-category of the legacy LMS category, and as such, it sits alongside legacy LMSs if you have multiple systems. In some cases and within certain organizations, it is the only learning management technology. It integrates with traditional HRMs, HRISs, and payroll systems, among other relevant systems. 

What are the typical reasons customers select a PLMS over an LMS? 

For decades, LMSs were (and honestly still are) successful in compliance management. However, legacy thinking has failed in getting learners to adopt and consume content. Burdened by content overload, muddled visibility, and waning employee engagement, companies have been unsuccessful in tying their employees’ learning and development to overall business performance. People leaders have indicated that a lack of direction and perceived relevance has led employees to believe the learning content they consume isn’t relevant to day-to-day performance.

Additionally, most companies struggle to tangibly link their L&D programs to increased business performance and prove ROI. These are the pain points the PLMS was born out of and created to solve. 

How is this different from standalone learning and performance management systems? 

At its core, a performance management system focuses on job scorecards, managing performance against those job scorecards, and improving skills. Your traditional LMS looks at the administration, delivery, tracking, and assessment of educational courses and training programs. 

We have yet to see a successful integration of separate providers, given the HRISs in the market are focused on individual performance and learning management, not improving organizational performance. This is the crux of legacy perception issues with L&D. 

With the exponential growth and improvements in artificial intelligence, how is AI incorporated? 

The PLMS’s take is different from the legacy LMS’s take on AI. The use cases for AI in LMSs focus on creating more—more learning briefs, more learning content, and more AI admin assistance.

PLMSs come from a different angle, with their innovative generative AI systems focusing on assisting organizations in identifying optimal workforce capabilities. By tailoring recommendations to the organization’s strategy, problems, priorities, and key performance indicators, the PLMS tool revolutionizes the learning process. AI prompts users with targeted discovery questions, aligning with overall business or departmental strategies.

Here at Acorn PLMS, for example, you can leverage a comprehensive proprietary database of over 600 unique capabilities and 1600+ competencies. The AI will suggest specific enhancements to address priorities and overcome challenges, empowering organizations to achieve desired outcomes. 

Learning technology definitions

To tie things up, here are the definitions of the legacy systems available. 

What is a learning management system? 

A learning management system (LMS) is a software application or web-based platform designed to facilitate and manage the administration, delivery, tracking, and assessment of educational courses and training programs. It serves as a centralized hub where instructors can create and organize course content, communicate with learners, and track their progress. 

What is a performance management system? 

A performance management system is a structured process and set of activities designed to monitor, assess, and improve the performance of individuals and teams. It involves establishing clear goals and objectives, defining performance expectations, measuring progress, providing feedback, and taking corrective actions when necessary. 

It’s time to step into the future of learning and performance. Set up a call with a member of our team and we’ll show you how Acorn can help your business get ahead with linked performance and learning.