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Whether you are commissioning LMS development in South Africa or comparing LMS software from local suppliers, a learning management system here has to do more than deliver courses. It should hold the training records behind your Workplace Skills Plan and Annual Training Report, support your B-BBEE and employment equity reporting, protect personal information and, if you run accredited training, keep assessment and moderation records. The 14 tips below work through those requirements in a practical order: goals, content, enrolment, assessment, reporting, data security, connectivity and hosting. The people who build, facilitate and assess courses on your LMS can develop those skills on BOTI’s train-the-trainer and ETDP courses.
A learning management system (LMS) is software that delivers training and keeps the records around it: who is enrolled on which course, what they have completed, how they scored and which certificates they hold. You will also see the terms learner management system, often used for the record-keeping side of accredited training, and training management system, for scheduling classroom training. The tips below cover all three.
14 tips to set up a learning management system in South Africa
Tip 1: Start with your goals and your users
Decide what the LMS is for before you look at software. Common goals are onboarding new staff, compliance and policy training, product and procedure training, management development and accredited programmes. Then describe the users: how many employees, at which sites, on which devices, and who will run the system day to day.
Tip 2: Know the legislation the system must support
An LMS in South Africa should hold the records you need under:
- the Skills Development Act 97 of 1998 and the SETA grant system;
- the Employment Equity Act;
- the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act 53 of 2003 (B-BBEE Act), because skills development spend counts on the B-BBEE scorecard;
- the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), because the system holds personal information about every learner.
The system will not make you compliant on its own, but it should show what training was done, for whom and when.
Tip 3: Plan for your WSP and ATR from day one
Employers submit a Workplace Skills Plan (WSP), their training plan for the year, and an Annual Training Report (ATR), on the training done in the previous year, to their SETA by 30 April each year[1]. The mandatory grant, 20% of the Skills Development Levy an employer pays[1] (the levy is 1% of payroll[2]), depends on submitting them on time and being up to date with levy payments. The LMS does not usually submit them itself; your skills development facilitator (SDF) prepares and submits them. What the LMS can do is produce the training data behind them, by employee, occupation and course, so the SDF is not rebuilding the year from attendance registers in April.
Tip 4: Capture the learner information you need, and no more
For each learner, the LMS typically needs:
- name, employee number and contact details;
- ID number;
- job title, job grade and occupation, using the six-digit OFO (Organising Framework for Occupations) codes that WSPs use;
- business unit, branch or site, and manager;
- race, gender and disability, which employment equity, B-BBEE and WSP/ATR reporting need;
- date of appointment and educational background.
Link the LMS to your HR or payroll system if you can, so that changes update automatically. Collect only what a clear purpose requires, and restrict who can see sensitive fields such as race, disability and ID numbers.
Tip 5: Plan the content: custom courses and ready-made courses
A system with nothing useful on it will not be used. Most organisations need two kinds of content:
- Custom courses on your own procedures, systems and policies, which no off-the-shelf course covers. BOTI builds custom online courses from a client’s own procedures and hosts them on a learning management system; see also how BOTI turns SOPs into online training.
- Ready-made courses on general skills such as communication, time management or spreadsheets. BOTI’s e-learning library has 142 self-paced courses, each with a certificate.
Good e-learning combines short text, pictures, video and audio, breaks topics into short modules, and includes self-tests so learners can check their progress. Forums and simple games such as quizzes help keep learners engaged.
Tip 6: Make enrolment simple, and automate onboarding
The LMS should keep enrolment admin to a minimum. It should let you:
- enrol learners individually, in groups or automatically by role, so that a new employee is assigned the onboarding courses on the first day;
- send requests to managers for approval;
- remind learners to complete pre-course forms;
- detect withdrawals and duplicate enrolments, for example a learner who has already done the same course;
- schedule trainers and training rooms for classroom sessions;
- send the training schedule to learners, managers and trainers automatically.
Tip 7: Set up assessments, pass marks and certificates
Short quizzes with multiple-choice, scaled and open-ended questions suit e-learning; written assignments and uploaded documents, spreadsheets and presentations suit longer programmes. Set a pass mark, decide how many attempts learners get, and schedule re-tests for compliance topics that must be refreshed. The LMS should issue a certificate automatically when a learner completes or passes a course, and keep a transcript for every employee.
Tip 8: Keep assessment and moderation records for accredited training
If you run accredited training, the LMS should support the assessment process. It should capture portfolios of evidence and link each one to its assessor, record results, select a sample of assessed learners for moderation and link it to a moderator, notify assessors of the moderation outcome, manage appeals, and flag assessments and moderation that are overdue. These records cover the formative and internal assessments that the provider runs before the final assessment. For QCTO programmes the final assessment is separate, a FISA for skills programmes and an EISA for occupational qualifications, and the QCTO, not your LMS, issues the certificate.
Tip 9: Plan for live online sessions and blended learning
A virtual classroom lets one facilitator train people at several sites at once. Look for:
- scheduling with automatic invitations to participants;
- attendance registers generated from each session;
- breakaway rooms, questions and answers, and document sharing;
- recordings that learners can watch later;
- access from computers and smartphones.
Many organisations combine e-learning, live online sessions and classroom training, so the LMS should record all three in one learner history.
Tip 10: Build the reports you need
Agree the standard reports before you launch:
- enrolments and completions by course, department and site;
- mandatory training that is overdue, with the names of the people concerned;
- individual learner transcripts;
- assessment results, including outstanding assessments;
- training spend against the training budget;
- course evaluations at four levels: the learners’ reaction, what they learnt, whether their behaviour at work changed, and the results for the organisation.
To get more from that evaluation data, the people who manage training can take BOTI’s one-day Measuring Results from Training: Training Evaluation Course.
Tip 11: Define user roles and how people sign in
Set up roles so that people see and change only what they need:
- course creators, who design and build e-learning;
- editing trainers, who can change the activities in their courses;
- non-editing trainers, who teach and assess but cannot change the course;
- learners;
- training coordinators, who enrol learners and support them;
- programme managers, who schedule courses and assign trainers;
- training managers, who monitor progress across the organisation.
Let employees sign in with their existing work login (single sign-on) where possible, and give external learners, such as contractors, separate accounts with limited access.
Tip 12: Protect personal information under POPIA
The LMS stores personal information about every learner, some of it sensitive. In general terms, you should:
- record why you collect each type of information, and use it only for that purpose;
- limit access by role, and remove access promptly when people leave;
- use strong passwords or single sign-on, and encrypt the data;
- back up the data and test that it can be restored;
- know where the data is hosted, and agree in writing how the supplier will protect it;
- decide how long records are kept, and archive or delete them when that period ends.
Everyone who handles learner records should understand the basics. BOTI runs a two-day POPIA Basic Training course and a 3-hour online masterclass, POPIA for Every Employee.
Tip 13: Design for connectivity and mobile devices
Not every employee has a work computer or affordable data. Make sure the LMS:
- works on smartphones and tablets as well as computers;
- has an offline mode, so learners can download a course, work on it and upload their progress when they are back online;
- keeps videos short, and offers lower-quality versions for slow connections;
- runs in current versions of the common web browsers.
Tip 14: Decide on hosting, support and the supplier
Decide early whether the LMS will be a hosted web application or installed on your own servers. A hosted, managed system needs less work from your IT team. An on-premises system gives you more control, but makes you responsible for the servers, operating system, database, security updates and service continuity, for example a tested recovery plan. Either way, agree with the supplier:
- who supports learners and administrators, and how quickly;
- how updates and new versions are handled;
- where the data is stored, and how you get it back if you change systems;
- what training your administrators and course creators will receive.
Finally, consider whether the supplier is based in South Africa, and check its B-BBEE status if your procurement policy requires it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a learning management system?
A learning management system (LMS) is software for delivering training and keeping its records: enrolments, completions, assessment results, certificates and reports. The concept grew out of e-learning. In South Africa an LMS also needs to handle local requirements, such as the data behind the Workplace Skills Plan and Annual Training Report, B-BBEE and employment equity reporting, POPIA, and the assessment and moderation records that accredited training needs.
How do you create a learning management system for a South African organisation?
Start with the requirements, not the software. Agree your goals and users; make sure the system supports skills development, employment equity, B-BBEE and POPIA requirements; plan the information for your Workplace Skills Plan and Annual Training Report; and decide on content, enrolment, assessment, certificates, reports and user roles. Then decide on virtual classrooms, offline and mobile access, hosting and support.
What should an LMS report to a SETA?
An LMS does not usually report to the SETA itself. The employer, usually through its skills development facilitator, submits the Workplace Skills Plan and Annual Training Report to its SETA by 30 April each year[1]. The LMS should produce the information behind them: learner profiles with race, gender, disability, occupation and job title, the training planned and completed, attendance, and assessment results. Ideally it links to your HR system so that changes to employee information update automatically.
Should an LMS be hosted on our premises or as a web application?
Either can work, so decide early. If you host on your premises, plan for service continuity, the operating system, the database, security updates and backups. If you use a hosted web application, check where the data is stored, how support works and how the system runs on phones and tablets. Either way, make sure staff with poor internet access can download courses, work offline and upload their progress later.
Can BOTI build the courses for our LMS?
Yes. BOTI builds custom online courses from your own procedures and hosts them on a learning management system. For general skills, BOTI’s e-learning library has 142 self-paced courses, each with a certificate.
An LMS is only as useful as the courses loaded onto it. BOTI’s three-day Design and Develop Effective Learning Material Training is for the people who design and develop your training material. It runs in-house at your premises, at BOTI’s venue in Sunningdale, Johannesburg, or online. Call 011 882 8853 or email [email protected].
Sources
- Mandatory Grants – Health and Welfare SETA (HWSETA), 2026.
- Skills Development Levy – South African Revenue Service (SARS), 2026.