How LaborMAX Staffing Created an Impressive Learning Culture with Litmos Learning Solutions

Industry: Staffing
Customer Since: 2018
Use Case: Internal Employee Training, HR Training, Compliance Training, New Hire Training
Litmos Solutions: Litmos LMS, Litmos Content, Litmos Content Authoring Tool

“We went from having an organization that was unsure if a formal training program was needed to having a very robust and vibrant learning platform and being able to develop a learning culture within the organization.”

That was the response we received when we asked Sparrow Malvino, Learning and Development Program Manager at LaborMAX Staffing, what achievements she has noticed since beginning their Litmos journey.

LaborMAX Staffing was established in 2002 and provides staffing services within the light industrial niche of the staffing industry. They have 150 locations doing business as LaborMAX Staffing owned by 45 separate legal entities. Their model allows their partners some autonomy in operations while providing shared support from their corporate location. As an organization, they aim to respond quickly with reliable and trustworthy service to their varied customers with a local presence. Their customers range anywhere from small independent businesses to Fortune 500 and 1000 companies.

What did training look like before Litmos?

Before Litmos, LaborMAX Staffing did not have a centralized learning department, and each location had informal training programs to support daily operations, therefore training was inconsistent. Furthermore, most training only took place at the start of an employee’s tenure to train the new hire how to be functional in the branch and perform basic processes. With multiple locations creating their own training materials, it resulted in inaccuracies, redundancies, and inefficiencies across the company.

Implementing Litmos

The LaborMax Staffing team knew it was time to look for a full-service learning solutions provider, like Litmos, to centralize training and tackle their team’s learning goals. They needed to partner with a company who could help them:

• Provide access to training content, regardless of location
• Provide content to assist with employee onboarding to improve retention
• Provide ongoing development opportunities for all internal employees
• Provide training content to assist with user adoption of new programs and innovations
• Provide their employees accessible tools to help them do their jobs more easily and efficiently

Initially, during the implementation process of their first year with Litmos, the LaborMAX Staffing team focused heavily on creating content for new hires and utilizing the Litmos Training Content for professional development for established employees and delivering both seamlessly through the Litmos LMS.

“Our main goal was to free up time during the onboarding process at the local level and help new hires get a solid base before diving into the day-to-day operations. Additionally, we started creating the viewpoint that our Litmos instance was the central hub of information. If an employee had a question or needed to learn something, they could look at LaborMAX University. In that first year, Litmos helped our company put controls in place for training content and standardized available resources,” says Malvino.

When asked about the implementation timeline and onboarding experiences, Malvino notes that from signing to launch, “It was about a month and a half. Onboarding Litmos was painless and easy. I had never implemented or used an LMS before and did not know what to do or how to begin. Using best practices and resources from Litmos helped me to set things up properly from the beginning.”

How does LaborMAX Staffing use Litmos day to day?

Today, four years post-implementation, LaborMAX Staffing uses Litmos for all things related to learning and training. LaborMAX Staffing now views learning as a critical part of their strategy for ongoing development for all internal employees and can meet their employees wherever they are in their career to strengthen their skills. Now, because of Litmos’ global scalability, the LaborMAX Staffing team notes that they are able provide quality training content and experiences to all offices, regardless of location.

LaborMAX Staffing is taking full advantage of all Litmos features. Their most used feature is Litmos Assign, which allows them to automate processes, while pushing learners to the correct content and teams without constant administrator involvement. “We currently have 118 automated Assign rules in place to push learners to content and teams by event, roles, location, and other special parameters that we were able to set up and customize ourselves,” says Malvino.

They also heavily rely on Litmos’s ability to divide content into Topics and Subtopics, as well as the ability to tag their courses using Content Tagging. With over 3,000 active courses in their library, LaborMAX Staffing uses Topics and Subtopics to organize their library for users to access the necessary content more efficiently. Malvino expressed that without this feature she does not believe their LMS instance would be utilized as much as it is.

Results with Litmos LMS

LaborMAX Staffing currently has 5 LMS administrators in 132 locations and 33 states. In 2022, they had 39,865 courses taken by 865 learners.

“As we evolve, Litmos has always been able to provide what we need. We continually get approached by Litmos competitors and we turn them down because we have everything we need and can continue to grow with Litmos. Despite challenges such as COVID, the Great Resignation, and internal growing pains, we have been able to use our Litmos LMS to provide needed content and continue operations which has helped us continue to be profitable and expand our locations. We do all this spending less than .001% of our revenue,” states Malvino.

LaborMAX Staffing estimates a savings of $192,000 in 2022 for time saved onboarding and training new employees. With features like the Automation Bundle allowing them to automate so many processes and reports in the LMS, they can keep their overhead cost and headcount in the learning department low. Litmos’ robust reporting features allow their team to utilize the LMS instead of spending money on an HRIS. Additionally, with the introduction of an LMS and other measures for training related to cyber security, they have been able to mitigate over $17 million in cyber security risk yearly.

In the last 15 months, LaborMAX Staffing has begun utilizing the Litmos Content Authoring Tool as their primary content creation tool which has allowed them to save money by discarding their previous authoring tools. “We used to primarily start from scratch each year only pulling the basic structure from a course over to the next year’s content. With the content authoring tool we have been able to use the previous year’s content and simply add updates and make minor changes, reducing the time needed to create content. Since the content authoring tool has many options to build content, we have plenty of variety to still mix things up and keep content engaging for our learners, so we do not need to turn to outside programs”, says Malvino.

Results with Litmos Content

As a small department with limited resources to bring as many diverse subjects as possible to their LMS, LaborMAX Staffing learning team relies heavily on the Litmos pre-built content. They rely on Litmos for all their Anti-discrimination and Sexual Harassment prevention courses and other specialty courses. The team appreciates that updates are pushed out to not only bring compliance coursework up to date, but also to respond to trends that are so often seen in HR. “With the Litmos library it is not just that there are thousands of courses that we did not have to make, there are many courses that we would never take on. It is not just about saving us thousands of hours of time; it is about being able to provide so much more than we ever could,” expresses Malvino.

Since the launch of Litmos learning solutions LMS and Training Content in May of 2018, there have been 33,145 Litmos courses taken by the LaborMAX Staffing employees. Due to varied backgrounds and experience among learners, some employees realized they were lacking technology, office, communication, and sales skills that are critical to performing well in their industry. Litmos courses have helped level the playing field for those that experience skills gaps. LaborMAX Staffing managers are turning to Litmos Courses for quick tips and strategies to help with leadership, management, and team dynamics. Additionally, during COVID the learning team noticed that many of their employees were turning to the Health and Wellbeing courses to help navigate those challenging times.

“My team of managers have been taking courses from the Litmos library since the beginning.  What has been the biggest draw for them is the variety of classes available that pertain to the challenges that they face every day.  Some of the favorites of the team were the courses that taught about personal development.” – Robert Butler, Owner of LaborMAX, Seattle and Alaska

LaborMAX Staffing employees have explored Litmos courses ranging from how to work with others, to general office skills, to sales skills, to project management, and to time management. Malvino noted that her favorite story came from an employee that wanted to learn Microsoft Excel inside and out. He had even gone as far to explore the option of taking it at a community college, but through the offering of Litmos Courses, he was able to save time and money by taking it through LaborMAX University and Litmos at his own pace, on his own schedule.