A learning management company sells learning systems and services to schools, colleges and employers, and then sets them up, trains the client's staff and supports them. Its people are split between building, implementing and teaching.
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Share your requirementsA learning management company works for institutions and employers, not for individual learners. It sells a learning system and the work around it: setting up courses, loading content, training teachers or employees, running reports and answering support requests. A contract starts with a sale, moves to an implementation team for a few weeks, then to customer success and support. Trainers visit client sites or run online sessions for the client's staff, and freelancers cover content loading and peak training weeks. Staff are often split across cities and time zones, and each client has a go-live date that cannot slip. The wider edtech and online education hub and the education sector page give the background.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
A school term or a corporate rollout leaves no room for delay, so a gap in the implementation team shows at once.
A few trainers are asked for by every client, and the rest of the bench is left to prove themselves on small jobs.
Staff are asked to configure on Monday, train on Wednesday and answer support on Friday, with little guidance on how to do each.
Hours go to clients by estimate, and the company cannot tell which accounts drain the team.
Content loading and training spikes are met with outside people who are briefed in a hurry and forgotten after.
A consultant, a customer success manager and a support lead each believe the client belongs to them.
The team is praised when a client renews and blamed when one does not, with little review of how each person did.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; Onboarding and Probation; HR Analytics and Management Reporting. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for education, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a learning management companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Who owns the client at sale, setup, training, support and renewal, and where the handover happens.
What this coversHideWho owns the client at sale, setup, training, support and renewal, and where the handover happens. The role design work turns this into clear descriptions.
A calendar showing which trainers and backups are placed on each account and when, so no one is the only answer.
What this coversHideA calendar showing which trainers and backups are placed on each account and when, so no one is the only answer.
A planned first project with a senior buddy, where the new person sees setup, training and handover.
What this coversHideA planned first project with a senior buddy, where the new person sees setup, training and handover. The onboarding process sets it out.
A weekly record that shows hours spent on setup, training, support and rework per account, feeding the figures from reporting and analytics.
What this coversHideA weekly record that shows hours spent on setup, training, support and rework per account, feeding the figures from reporting and analytics.
A short brief, a standard agreement and a named contact, so peak weeks are handled by people who know what is expected.
What this coversHideA short brief, a standard agreement and a named contact, so peak weeks are handled by people who know what is expected.
A short review of each person's clients, deadlines met and client comments, apart from the renewal result.
What this coversHideA short review of each person's clients, deadlines met and client comments, apart from the renewal result.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Roles written around the client journey, so each stage has a clear owner.
A first project for new consultants and trainers, with a buddy and a planned handover.
A review of delivery quality and client comments, with variable pay for deadlines met and accounts kept.
Utilisation, hours per account and trainer load shown on one page for the delivery head.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in education, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Faculty, administrative and support staff leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it within the academic calendar.
7 min readRead article
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead article
Hour by hour, then week by week, for a recruit's first month at a module, inverter, pack or junction box line: safety and handling first, a practice bench, a buddy, a sign-off and a day-30 review.
7 min readRead article
Six numbers, one page, same format each month. What they are, how to define them so they mean the same thing twice, and what each one tells you.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Pair each star with a junior on every account, record how they run sessions and give juniors a few sessions each week. Within two or three quarters you have more people who can take a client alone.
Put them on a real project with a senior buddy. They sit in on setup, a training session and the handover to support. A written walk-through of one past account helps, but the live project is what teaches.
Keep it to a weekly entry by account and task, explain how the figures are used and share them back. Teams accept it when it is used to plan work and protect them from overload.
Give them the same brief, the same materials and a named contact. Pay on a known date and ask for feedback after the job. Ask a qualified professional about the form of engagement for each arrangement.
Partly, for the roles that influence them. Add delivery measures, such as go-lives on time and client feedback, so people who do good work are not penalised when a client leaves for reasons they could not affect.
We would ask how many trainers are named on more than three accounts, how a new consultant learns the sale-to-renewal journey, and how hours per account are recorded. A good first project is role descriptions along the client journey plus a first-project induction. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
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