Top 10 Picks: Best Employee Training Software for 2023

If your organisation aims to enhance employee performance, adapt to emerging technologies, boost employee satisfaction, and retain top talent, then effective employee training programmes are crucial.

Employee training software solutions are here to help you and your team members craft and implement corporate training programmes to impact your leadership, onboarding, and compliance efforts, just to name a few. Doing so will help your organisation keep its employees satisfied and help the company sail towards its business goals.

Here, we share what employee training software is, along with some key features you should be on the lookout for and highlight the top ten solutions you should consider leveraging to help get your custom training programmes hitting the mark. 

What is employee training software?

Employee training software is an online platform that will empower you and your team to create successful employee training programmes.

Your training management solution will enable you to implement your learning strategy company-wide by enhancing your employee onboarding processes, boosting your upskilling efforts, and retaining your best employees. 

The types of employee training programmes your online solution will help you design, implement, or ramp up can  include:

1. Leadership training: Focuses on leadership skill sets that directly impact leading others.
2. Compliance training: Those training sessions all employees must undergo, such as safety, security, or legal training courses. 
3. Onboarding training: Covers essential training needs to streamline a new employee's start at your organisation. 
4. Technical training: This training content aims to improve employee performance by utilising technology or tools in their workflow to achieve maximum impact.
5. Sales training: Assist employees in advocating for the product, handling challenging customer inquiries, and highlighting its unique features effectively.
6. Anti-bias and diversity training: Teaches employees how to work with and around people from various backgrounds respectfully.

For you and your team to successfully create effective iterations of the learning experiences mentioned above, it is essential to consider certain key features when selecting employee training software.

Key features of employee training software

When choosing employee training software, it's important to consider the key features the market is offering to ensure you create effective learning experiences. 

Here are a few crucial features that you should cast your eye to before taking the leap and investing in your new employee training solution: 

• Course creation, management, and assignment: A good training platform should enable you to create and manage online courses, reuse training tools, and make them accessible for employees on demand.
• Content authoring tool: A quick and user-friendly course builder to create learning solutions at pace no matter the user's technical expertise. Specific functionality should include interactive elements and personalised learning paths. 
• Collaborative learning: In a shift from top-down training, collaborative learning enables experts and learners to shape the training agenda and course content by declaring their own learning needs and sharing internal knowledge.
• Workflow automation: Your solution should take the hassle out of the mundane but necessary day-to-day tasks that the L&D function cannot live without, including sending emails, notifications, and alerts. 
• Reporting and measuring impact: Your training platform should help you report and analyse your training solutions' impact with metrics like employee engagement, progress, or retention. 
• Customisation: Empower you to customise the learning experience. For example, to help enhance your blended learning strategy, it should let you integrate eLearning formats such as video conferencing. 
• High integration: With learning and development continually expanding, your employee training software should have great third-party integration. This includes integrating with your existing systems, including SCORM, as well as other systems like your HCM or sales systems like Salesforce. 

Now that we understand the basics let's explore the top ten software providers for employee training.

1. 360Learning

360Learning is a comprehensive learning platform that combines the features of an LMS, LXP, and Academies, focusing on collaborative learning to upskill from within.

360Learning’s AI-powered capabilities help you accelerate the content creation process, deliver relevant courses quickly, and align with your organisation's standards, goals, and guidelines.

You can also create courses at pace using templates based on best-in-class digital pedagogy for your most frequent use cases to impact employee performance. For example, when leveraged with an employee training program checklist, you and your team can expect to see a real difference in your learning strategy. 

360Learning empowers you to harness a skill-driven approach to upskill employees from within to perform better today and prepare for tomorrow. Employees are empowered to declare their own learning needs, which helps you curate custom skills paths that address organisational gaps. 

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

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

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

Related: Employee training program checklist.

2. LearnUpon

LearnUpon is a cloud-based learning management system that is easy to use and can be used for employee training.

With the training delivery functionality, you and your team can design and create online training modules with built-in assessments and features that empower employees to take control of their eLearning journey.

LearnUpon’s learner engagement features include gamification and leaderboards, course accreditation, and certifications to help encourage them to reach their employee development goals. The learning management system comes equipped with a mobile app that lets employees engage in mobile learning.

Pros: SCORM and xAPI compliant; custom branding, gamification, and eCommerce functionalities. 

Cons: Not ideal for enterprises with a learning strategy based on collaborative learning.

3. TalentLMS

TalentLMS is an easy-to-use learning platform that offers a range of features, such as course creation tools, gamification, leaderboards, and reporting and analytics.

TalentLMS is a learning platform that utilises automation to assist you in managing tasks such as course assignments and test grading, saving you time, reducing your worries about administrative duties and letting you focus on those tasks that matter.

By leveraging content creation tools, you can swiftly design and launch online learning resources to improve employee retention rates or enhance employee performance. The platform has an intuitive interface to improve the user experience for both the L&D team and learners.

Pros: User-friendly; lots of gamification functionality; supports over 30 languages.

Cons: Role-based templates are not included in collaborative authoring functionalities.

Pricing: A free plan for five users and up to 10 courses with unlimited email support. Next is the Starter Plan at $69.00 per month, which offers unlimited courses and is best for up to 40 users.

4. Docebo

Docebo is a scalable and user-friendly cloud-based LMS that can help ramp up employee training programmes. 

Through the Discover, Coach & Share feature, you can tap into the expertise of subject-matter experts to document their internal knowledge or answer employee questions in real-time. You can also utilise other social learning functionalities to create customised learning paths in your employee training programmes. 

With Docebo, you have the power to enhance your onboarding processes. You and your team can create and implement customised learning experiences for each new employee with interactive and social learning features.

You can also empower learners to access training materials at their point of need, including mobile learning, or use microlearning to get that organisational knowledge moving company-wide.

Pros: Only pay for active users; includes over 400 integrations

Cons: Need to request a quote for pricing.

5. Litmos

Litmos LMS is a cloud-based platform incorporating online, in-person, mobile, and social learning.

Litmos offers a user-friendly interface that provides a smooth user experience for both learners and administrators. Additionally, it allows for easy scaling of custom training programmes to accommodate large numbers of users across diverse and global workforces.

You can also boost your employee training management efforts by uploading your existing training courses, creating new content with the course authoring tool, or leveraging the content library, which offers over 2,000 courses, including compliance training content for the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Pros: Great integration with over 50 APIs or connectors, including CRM, ERP, or HR. 

Cons: Access to the 2,000-strong content library is only available in the Premier Suite plan. 

Pricing: Undisclosed. 14-day free trial, followed by three subscription plans: the Foundation Suite for under 100 learners; Premier Suite for mid-market and high-growth companies; and the Platinum Suite for global companies.

6. Absorb LMS

The following solution, Absorb, uses AI, analytics, and personalisation to improve online employee training and comes with a user-friendly interface and access to content libraries.

You can implement tailored and individualised learning paths to enhance your employee training initiatives. These can be expanded to include teams or entire departments. You can also increase learner involvement via multimedia formats, mobile learning via the Absorb Learn app, or social learning features.

With the Absorb Engage feature, you can showcase particular training materials, modules, or courses on billboards that learners can easily access. This feature also offers gamification options and allows feedback collection through polls and surveys.

Pros: SCORM compliant; the Absorb Learn app is free to download. 

Cons: Collaborating with subject-matter experts using the authoring tool can be difficult.

7. eLoomi

eLoomi is a training solution that combines LMS and LXP features to help you deliver impactful and engaging employee training.

With eLoomi, you have the power to create new content using the course builder for content creation. You also have the option to upload existing SCORM or PDF files or use training materials developed by experts from the Content Store.

You can also easily manage employee training programmes by importing users, setting groups, and automating learning journeys, all while tracking learner progress and ensuring course completion with real-time reporting.

Pros: Great for organisations with hybrid and remote working cultures. 

Cons: Pricing is undisclosed.

8. RiseUp

Next on our list is RiseUP, a cloud-based platform incorporating the features of a learning experience platform and a learning management system.

By leveraging RiseUp, you and your team can streamline and track employee progress with functionalities such as quizzes or open-ended tests. You can also use the Data Lab tool to monitor skill development and learner engagement with customisable reports and dashboards.

The user-friendly course authoring tool empowers you and your team to create blended learning training courses by leveraging provided training modules, creating new content quickly, and getting feedback from learners to help you iterate and improve. 

Pros: The mobile app includes offline access; open API integration. 

Cons: Pricing undisclosed.

9. Thrive

Thrive is a learning and skills platform that combines the features of a learning management system and a learning experience platform.

The platform uses automation to boost compliance training completion rates by notifying learners of training courses they need to complete and by when. You can design your training materials as engaging microlearning.

To monitor skill gaps in your company, you can utilise the skills analytics feature of Thrive. This will enable you to create targeted learning experiences that align with your overall learning strategy.

Pros: Pricing is very transparent. 

Cons: May not be suitable for organisations seeking a broader approach beyond microlearning.

Pricing: Annual subscription plans based on users, starting at £25,000 for 0–500 users per year (minimum three years).

10. TalentCards

TalentCards is a mobile learning platform designed to deliver mobile training to learners on the go.

With this platform, you can easily provide training programmes for deskless workers through accessible on-demand training, optimised microlearning, and multilingual support. Using card sets, you can quickly create easy access to eLearning, add users, group them accordingly, and share microlearning with your frontline employees.

TalentCards empower your employees to complete compliance training from their smartphones, and the gamification functionalities let learners earn points for completing quizzes or training courses. 

The platform also includes spaced repetition for impacting knowledge retention and an analytics dashboard for a prompt overview of metrics, such as progress or completion rates.

Pros: Great for industries such as manufacturing, food and beverage, retail, and others with frontline employees. 

Cons: Automated notifications and organising groups features are only available in the Premium Plan. 

Pricing: Free plan for up to 5 users, followed by a Standard Plan starting at $50 per month for 50 users ($1 per extra user) and a Premium Plan starting at $75 per month for 50 users ($1 per extra user).

Match your employee training solution to your learning needs

In this article, we have discussed what employee training software is and highlighted the top ten employee training software you should consider to help you and your team future-proof your organisation.

When selecting an employee training solution, ensure that it caters to your team's and organisation's requirements. 

Whether you want to utilise the advantages of collaborative learning or streamline your L&D workflow with AI-powered tools to reduce expenses, keep your learning strategy, and your employees and company's learning needs at the forefront when you finally land on your chosen solution.