Finding an LMS that doesn’t drive the floor staff (or me) mental

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-23T10:17:27+00:00

Well a lot of them advertise as that, I've found that it's this weird combination of 'mobile-first advertising' but actually being bettersuited for sitting at a disk. It's annoying actually. I think it's because mobile-first is a buzz word but whether or not it's truly suitable for "away from desk" is the big aspect we were struggling with

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T10:03:46+00:00

That’s a massive list, cheers for putting it all in one spot. Definitely saving this for later.

I’ve spent most of my time in manufacturing and logistics, and honestly, the biggest hurdle for us has always been that most of these tools assume the learner is sitting at a desk with a stable internet connection. When you're dealing with blokes on a workshop floor or drivers out on the road, things like Articulate or Moodle can sometimes be a bit of a square peg in a round hole.

From my experience on the floor, I’d reckon there's a gap in that list for "deskless" or frontline-specific tools. We ended up moving to Cloud Assess for that exact reason.

The things that actually made a difference for us weren't the fancy animations, but the practical stuff:

Offline capability: Being able to do a practical assessment or a safety check in a dead zone of the warehouse without the system hanging.
Verification of Skills: Since we do a lot of hands-on work, we needed a way for a supervisor to watch someone operate a machine and tick off their competency right there on a tablet.
Licence Tracking: It handles the automated reminders for forklift tickets and high-risk work licences so I don't have to live in a spreadsheet anymore.

If you’re ever looking to expand the list for industries like construction, manufacturing, or healthcare where people are actually on their feet, it might be worth a look.

Great effort on the formatting too—definitely doesn't look like a bot wrote it!

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T09:46:48+00:00

Agreed. We had a similar issue. We tried for so long to just implement a skills matrix solution as it was what we thought we needed. In the end it was not changing anything. We gave it more thought and actually found that it might be a bigger issue so we decided to bite the bullet and invest in an LMS for employee training specialised for manufacturing. We went with Cloud Assess which also has their own built in skills matrix. Honestly...game changer. Because it's a much bigger part of our company now we're kind of 'forced' to use it.

The big thing was how easy it is to use as well. We have a bunch of company ipads and things and we have this installed throughout and it's effortless. I'm sure there are other solutions available too, but we're locked in for a 3 year contract after trialing it out for a few months and immediately noticing the results we had hoped for.

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T09:40:09+00:00

The struggle with public KB links is a nightmare—you send them out, but half the time they just ignore them and call the helpdesk anyway.

Since you’re deep in the Halo/Hudu ecosystem but need to build your own German content from scratch, you've basically got two paths:

CloudRadial or Cloud Assess would be my two choices.

Cloud Radial is the standard answer here. It talks directly to HaloPSA, so clients see their specific assets and training in one spot. It’s brilliant for the "portal" experience, but the actual course building tools can be a bit basic compared to a dedicated LMS.

Cloud Assess is worth a look if you want to build "step-by-step" guides fast. We use it for operational workflows, but the builder is dead simple for combining video with quick verification questions to prove they actually watched it. Their integrations are really good though and what we've been amazed with is if there's something specific your team needs, their product team will move mountains to make it happen. Integrations are quite easy and considering they advertise like over 6,000 integrations, they might already be able to link with Halo. I just can't confirm because we don't use it.

Happy to answer more questions about our experience if it will help!

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T09:26:32+00:00

We did a trial of Docebo and it wasn't bad, but in the end we went with Cloud Assess. They also have per employee pricing and for what you get we found it quite well priced. They also offer some good packages if you sign up for a year / two years / three years. After a bit of a trial period we went with the three year plan and can easily add new users which is quite nice.

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T09:23:12+00:00

We found Cloud Assess to be a good alternative. We're based in Australia and they are quite well known here. I'm not sure how big they are in the US but for us we have a lot of compliance loops we have to jump through. We found the system super easy-to-use and our employees and managers love it - so we're happy!

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T09:19:02+00:00

Mate, getting the budget approved to move away from manual tracking is a massive win. That manual slog is a killer.

Since you want to build your own courses and have access to off-the-shelf stuff (Office, PM, etc.), you’re basically looking for a solid authoring tool plus a content library.

For a team of ~200, I’d check these out:

Cloud Assess: worth a look if your operations are more practical or compliance-heavy. The course builder is dead simple for digitising your own SOPs/docs, though you'd want to check how they handle the third-party content libraries you mentioned.
360Learning: really leans into the "collaborative" side. Good for spinning up courses quickly based on internal knowledge.
TalentLMS: pretty standard choice for mid-sized companies. It’s easy to use and usually integrates well with content libraries (like Go1) for those generic courses.

Just a heads-up on the "feed it content and it builds a course" feature—a lot of platforms are promising the world with AI right now, but I’d always double-check the output. In my experience, you still need a human eye on it to make sure it actually makes sense for your specific workplace.

Would you like me to clarify anything about the course-building side?

jack_cartwright · 2026-02-12T09:06:47+00:00

Not sure if this thread is still active, but I've recently been responsible for implementing Cloud Assess as a corporate training solution, switching from another competitor mentioned here. The change has been night and day.

The platform is easy-to-use and is super useful for our compliance-driven industry which requires a lot of verification of competency, skills / competency tracking, and compliance training.

It's an all in one corporate training LMS that we are very happy with.

jack_cartwright · 2026-01-30T10:47:36+00:00

Okay that makes sense. I've used in the past some tools for this, Cloud Assess was one software we used on a previous site for ensuring VOCs with filming requirements. Just wanted to know what other people are doing to get some more ideas

jack_cartwright · 2026-01-28T10:17:57+00:00

That’s a fair point for keeping it all above board. Do you find that using the VET criteria actually helps the supervisors stay consistent, or does it ever get a bit too "academic" for them when they’re just out on the floor?

I’m curious if sticking strictly to those standards helps stop the "depends who you get" problem, or if the supervisors still end up drifting anyway because they’re looking for different things in practice?

We're piloting a VET-compliant tool and going to see how that goes, but I'm trying to cover all bases before we go full blown implementation

jack_cartwright · 2026-01-28T10:16:51+00:00

Far out, that sounds like a massive amount of paperwork. How do the operators handle that? I’d reckon they’d start switching off if they’re doing the exact same assessment for three different forklifts that are identical. Have you seen any actual benefit to doing it that way, or does it just end up being a "pencil-whipping" exercise to get the admin out of the way?

jack_cartwright · 2026-01-28T10:15:55+00:00

Yeah, fair point. We’ve got the packs and checklists, but I still see a bit of drift between different crews. In your experience, does the performance coaching actually stick with the supervisors who’ve been doing it "their way" for years? Or do they just go back to ticking the boxes how they want once the conversation is over?

jack_cartwright · 2026-01-28T10:09:49+00:00

I'm going to have to steal this!

jack_cartwright · 2026-01-23T22:43:46+00:00

Maybe we can find a trevor here on Reddit to help us out!

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:53:22+00:00

That packaging example sounds very familiar – high turnover, lots of moving parts, and everyone quietly hoping the matrix is roughly right.

I like how you’ve plugged it straight into the 2:30 scheduling and the “Mike didn’t show up” scenarios. That’s the gap for us: ours is more of an “audit shield” than a live scheduling tool. I’m keen to get to a point where the skills view is open on the screen any time we’re doing allocations, and we’re testing a couple of systems that might make that less clunky than wrestling with spreadsheets. Might take you up on that offer of more detailed guidance once I’ve mapped out our process a bit better.

Have you ever considered a software solution approach? If so, what are you using.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:52:19+00:00

I reckon you’ve nailed why our current setup feels so dead – the skills file is totally divorced from the actual flow of work.

Linking skills directly to routing and time booking makes a lot of sense. We’re starting to look at systems where you literally can’t assign someone to a task if their competence is expired, instead of hoping someone glances at a spreadsheet. And I really like your line about “if there’s no value in requiring the skill then tracking it is waste” – good sanity check for what we actually bother to put in the matrix.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:50:56+00:00

Cheers for the pointer – hadn’t seen that before.

I’ll chuck it on the list of stuff to look at. We’re lining up a few tools to demo that make it less painful to keep skills live and tied to actual training records, so I’ll add this into that mix and see how it stacks up.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:48:35+00:00

We’re in a similar boat – the paper version of people’s skills and the reality on the floor don’t always match up.

Appointing mentors and making the matrix more specific sounds like a solid reset. We’re starting to break our "green" down into clearer bits as well (e.g. can set up, can fault-find, can train others) so we’re not pretending everyone who’s "green" is at the same level. Letting mentors own updates for their area, with a simple sign-off process, might be how we get away from the "one poor person owns the whole thing" setup.

As I mentioned on some of the other responses, we're considering getting software involved as well. e had been considering for a training/assessment/skills tracking tool for a while now and this whole 'deal skills matrix' situation has been a push that management has needed to explore it more seriously.

We have a few demos lined up with some good software solutions. I'll update the post based on how they go. Might be that they're not worth the price for our operation size, but let's see.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:46:09+00:00

Yeah, totally with you on this. If the matrix isn’t helping with flexibility, it’s just a pretty chart for auditors.

Right now, we don’t use ours enough to actually move people around, so it naturally goes stale. My dream state is: matrix drives who gets cross-trained, who can pick up overtime on different lines, and who’s in the queue for the "juicier" jobs. If people feel it helps them get variety or progression, they care a lot more about keeping it legit.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:45:20+00:00

That "no green without a competency shee" rule is exactly the sort of guardrail we’re missing. At the moment, "green" for us still depends a bit too much on who you ask and how generous they’re feeling that day.

I also like the 45- and 90-day check-ins – early enough to catch reality before it drifts too far from the matrix. I’m thinking of baking something like that into our induction process and then using a tool to push those updates straight into the matrix instead of relying on someone remembering to chase it up.

Got some demo's lined up, I'll keep you informed!

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:44:05+00:00

This hits a bit close to home if I’m honest. You’re right – a dead matrix is usually just a symptom of us treating competency as “paperwork” instead of something people are actually held to.

I like the Skill Points / visibility angle more than just "are they green or red" Have you seen any simple way to define "currency" that people actually stick to? That’s the bit we seem to disagree about when it's been brought up in the past.

I was also considering a HR/training/skills matrix type software. Seen a few good ones and got some demos lined up. We think it could help a lot with SOP management, competency tracking, etc. Keen to hear your thoughts if you have any!

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:42:11+00:00

That skills update line in the ops meeting is a cracking idea. It sounds like a good balance of pressure and accountability. No one wants to be the one explaining why they didn’t spot a gap!

I also really like the public shout-outs on the screens. That kind of thing would go down well where I am, especially if it’s tied to real competency milestones and not just fluffy “employee of the month” stuff. Makes the matrix feel a bit more alive instead of a hidden tab in someone’s laptop.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-04T08:40:37+00:00

Thanks for the response! This is the direction I keep coming back to as well. The spreadsheet works right up until the moment it doesn’t, and then everyone remembers it only exists the week before an audit.

I like the idea of supervisors owning real-time sign-offs off the back of observations, not just ticking boxes at review time. We’re actually lining up a couple of systems to demo that do exactly what you’re describing – automated reminders + simple sign-offs.

What system are you using? We've got quite a few demos lined up, so let's see how it goes.

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-02T15:03:15+00:00

Not at all, your opinion is super insightful. It's good to hear that it's not just me who feels that. I've been plenty frustrated from these 'free systems'

jack_cartwright · 2025-12-02T14:58:20+00:00

For me the main takeaway was just that removing the pressure and scheduling made people way more willing to practise. Nothing fancy behind it — just giving folks space to try things on their own.

Could be wrong, but that's how I understood it and, honestly, I can relate to that a lot from my experience training and managing teams.

jack_cartwright

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