The 7 Best Employee Onboarding LMSs of 2024

Onboarding in the corporate learning environment can be a challenge, especially without the right learning management system (LMS) that fits the needs of your new hires and organization. 

Compounding our challenge is that organizations are facing a skills shortage across the board: 72% in operations and 69% in both financial and managerial roles. 

Employee retention appears more crucial than ever, yet only 52% of employees report feeling satisfied with their onboarding process. 

If L&D teams are going to keep employees engaged and help them transition into the organization in a way that makes them feel welcome, it’s time to start focusing on optimizing our onboarding processes. A comprehensive learning platform can help you impact these challenges by facilitating best-in-class onboarding experiences. 

In this article, we will discuss the role of an LMS in onboarding new employees, essential features to consider, and the seven best LMS solutions for onboarding new hires in 2024.

The role of an LMS in employee onboarding

Managing an effective onboarding process for new employees can be challenging for L&D and human resources teams. 

However, an LMS can help simplify this integral L&D function by empowering us to build a scalable onboarding process. A learning platform can be your team’s central command for designing and deploying your upskilling training programs. 

Onboarding software solutions will also provide your new hires with a centralized hub where they can access their onboarding experiences in their workflow. From day one, new employees will have access to the training courses to help them understand their role and feel like they’re an integral part of your company’s culture. 

Leveraging a learning management system for onboarding can help you impact those critical metrics that concern stakeholders, like retention, and those that matter to L&D, such as engagement. An LMS also empowers you to move at pace, for example, to update training materials or compliance training when needed quickly. 

A robust onboarding LMS will also offer you integrations with HR systems, and the best will include functionality for personalized learning paths, automation for upskilling, and AI-powered analytics to tailor learning content and track learner progress.

Essential features of an effective onboarding LMS

When looking to boost your employee onboarding, here are six key learning platform functionalities that will help you design a successful onboarding process for your new hires.

1. Engaging user interface: An intuitive interface design will go a long way in reducing the time new hires spend getting familiar with your learning solution and more time working to complete the milestones on their onboarding journey. 

2. Mobile learning: To help ensure that your onboard training is flexible and accessible, a learning platform that empowers new employees to access online courses on all devices will enable them to learn on the go at their own pace.

3. Microlearning: An effective onboarding LMS will include functionality to host and deliver online learning content in various formats to ensure your learning experiences are engaging. Keep an eye out for a capability to deploy microlearning modules to help new hires consume crucial training at their own pace. 

4. Collaborative learning: A learning platform driven by collaborative and social learning will significantly increase access to your institutional knowledge, giving new employees insight into how company veterans do their jobs and close skills gaps in the process. 

5. AI and personalization: A significant feature of an effective onboarding LMS is AI-powered personalization. The capability to create individualized learning paths specific to new hires and their role will supply them with the necessary skills. Consider learning solutions that leverage AI to make L&D tasks impactful, scalable, and less repetitive.

6. Reporting and analytics: Robust data harvesting and reporting functionality is critical for tracking a new hire’s onboarding journey progress. These tools, preferably AI-powered, will help you and your team ensure that employees are achieving their upskilling goals. 

In addition to the above six essential features, keep an out for tools such as gamification to boost engagement and quizzes to help measure progress, as well as notifications to help keep learners on track and engaged throughout their onboarding experience.

The 7 best learning management systems for employee onboarding of 2024

1. 360Learning

360Learning’s learning platform fosters internal mobility to solve the talent shortage by empowering your company to upskill from within and deliver best-in-class onboarding.

By leveraging powerful automations and AI tools, you can decentralize the onboarding process while reducing the daily busy work with functionalities that include HCM integrations, user management, and a collaborative authoring tool. With 360Learning, it’s easy to always deliver the right training at the right time to streamline the onboarding journey. 

Pros: Modern user interface and AI-powered tools that facilitate collaborative learning and content creation; LMS, LXP, and Academies all rolled into one cloud-based platform.

Cons: Not ideal for businesses with a low appetite for collaborative learning.

Pricing: Free trial. The team plan is $8 per registered user per month (up to 100 users). You can also request a live demo to get a quick platform overview.

2. LearnUpon

Next, LearnUpon's LMS aims to combine content management and online training to equip your employees with everything they need in their onboarding journey. 

Leveraging LearnUpon’s features will enable you to deploy onboarding courses that help your new employees integrate into the organization and develop the skills they need for their roles. When designing learning experiences, you can use the autopilot functionality to speed up your daily admin by automatically enrolling learners. 

The LMS includes functionality for learners to self-enroll in courses when they need to upskill and take control of their own learning. There is also a capability to build a certification and assessment engine for automatic testing as your new hire progresses along their onboarding journey. 

Pros: Good integration and automation functionality for busy L&D teams. 

Cons: Pricing could be more transparent. 

Pricing: Free trial. Subscription with an Essential plan (up to 150 users), Premium plan (150 to 500 users), and Enterprise (500 users and more).

3. iSpring Learn

iSpring Learn is a user-friendly eLearning solution with comprehensive features and scalable functionalities to make onboarding easier.

To start, iSpring Learn empowers you and your team to create engaging training experiences for your onboarding programs, including the capability for role-plays, assessments, and video courses. Next, you can quickly assign your content to your new hires, who will receive notifications for enrollments and deadlines.

Other standout features include data and analytics reporting and supervisor dashboards for managers to efficiently monitor how new employees progress through their onboarding experience. 

Pros: Good course engagement with features such as reactions, certifications, and leaderboards.

Cons: Some users may find the content management in the Start plan limited.

Pricing: Free trial. For 300 users, the Start plan is $2.29 per user, per month, and the  Business plan is $3.14 per user, per month (both billed annually).

4. LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is a versatile LMS for employee training and customer education, which includes strong analytics and integrations.

You can leverage design and deploy personalized training paths targeted to your new hires' roles and skill levels, ensuring they get what they need to succeed in your organization. 

The gamification and assessment functionalities will help you understand where employees struggle in their onboarding experience and then further boost new hire engagement with LearnWorlds’s mobile app and responsive web design. 

Pros: Interactive video editor, an eCommerce system, and automatic video transcripts.

Cons: The Starter plan has a $5 fee per course sale. 

Pricing: Free trial. The Starter plan is $29 per month, the Pro Trainer is $79 per month, and the Learning Centre is $249 per month. Annual plans offer up to 20% discount on these prices.

5. TalentLMS

TalentLMS is a versatile platform for small to midsize businesses and enterprise-level training, offering great functionality for employee onboarding.

To empower your new hires on their onboarding journey, TalentLMS includes functionality for personalized learning experiences by letting you assign role-specific training content, with an option to deploy at a pace that doesn’t overwhelm them all at once. 

Next, you can leverage the analytics dashboard to track progress and deploy course completion surveys. New employees can also access the TalentLMS app for onboarding when needed. 

Pros: Easy to implement, with gamification elements to make the onboarding process engaging for new hires. 

Cons: Course assignment and user management automation are only available under the Premium plan. 

Pricing: Forever-Free plan available (up to 5 users and 10 courses). The Starter plan (up to 40 users) is $69 per month, the Basic (up to 100 users) is $149 per month, the Plus (up to 500 users) is $279 per month, and the Premium (up to 1,000 users) is $459 per month.

6. Absorb LMS

Absorb LMS offers you an easy-to-use solution to help design and deploy your onboarding programs.

AbsorbLMS empowers new employees to access their onboarding learning experiences from anywhere, including their mobile devices. The solution also includes functionality for personalized onboarding learning paths and then to scale your training as your organization grows. 

Next, you can track the progress of your new hires along their onboarding journey by using AbsorbLMS’s dashboards and generate reports that reflect the metrics that you and your team are using to show impact and be sure employees are getting the most out of their learning experiences.

Pros: Good customization for the dashboard and integration capabilities.

Cons: Some users may find the authoring tool challenging to use. 

Pricing: Free trial. Tailored pricing is offered through a quote.

7. Docebo

Docebo provides a cloud-based Learning Suite that offers a variety of LMS features to help you design and deploy your onboarding program.

First up, Docebo includes functionality for automated learner enrollment and a large library of onboarding content for you to leverage as you welcome your new hires to your organization. You can also create your own training by using the AI-based content creation tool.

Docebo also has features for content recommendations to ensure new employees get the right content for their onboarding journey and automated upskilling to ensure they have the skills they need for their new role. 

Pros: Good user and content management. 

Cons: Pricing could be more transparent.

Choose the right onboarding LMS for your company

Modern and world-class learning platforms can represent a significant investment, so picking the solution that is right for you, your team, and your organization is critical.

As you work to align a solution with your specific onboarding objectives and training needs in your decision-making process, there are many factors to consider before you select a learning management system. 

We suggest you start by listing your onboarding pain points, assessing your business maturity, and selecting a pricing plan that is right for you. Then, consider the features that are nice-to-haves and those that are must-haves, such as customization, ease of use, scalability, and integration capabilities. 

From here, be sure to get in touch with your chosen LMSprovider to request a demo or free trial so you can get a feel of the LMS’s fit with your onboarding strategy and overall learning culture. And feel free to leverage our checklist that will take you through the scenarios you can apply to help you choose the right LMS for your organization.

Make your employee onboarding program transformative

The impact of an effective onboarding LMS can be transformative for your organization’s ability to engage, train, and retain new hires.

But be sure to explore the benefits and features of the seven highlighted solutions to find the perfect match for your onboarding training efforts, your new hires, and your organization. 

 With the right learning platform, you and your team can make an impact as you manage your upskilling efforts while accelerating the successful integration of new team members into company culture.