5 Reasons to Add Microlearning to your Employee Training Strategy

Advances in technology have bettered the world in many ways – but with each new app and social media site, we also see a decrease in the length of the average attention span. This trend also applies to employee training – as we discover more innovative ways to deliver training, students want to get their information as quickly as possible and spend less time in the classroom or in front of the computer.

As a result, more and more companies are turning to microlearning as a method for training their staff.

What Is Microlearning?

Before you can dive into the benefits of microlearning, also called micro training, it’s important to know what we’re talking about. Essentially, microlearning is education through a series of small-but-focused pieces of content rather than long, drawn-out lectures.

A few examples of microlearning tools include:

• ebooks

• videos

• podcasts

• articles

• infographics

Here are five reasons you may want to consider including microlearning in your employee training strategy.

1. Stay on Top of Updates

   Microlearning is ideal for small but frequent updates. Instead of adding to your existing training, or constantly making changes, it may make more sense to just create very focused new training for each change. In some cases, the smaller the change, the better since we know that people prefer short bursts of easy-to-grasp information.

2. Information Overload

   Studies continue to show that people can only absorb so much information at any one time and the last thing you want to do is overload your employees by dumping hours and hours of training on them all at once. You can take the risk of overwhelming or boring your employees or you can give them short-but-targeted information to access at their convenience.

3. Improved Communication

   Microlearning gives you the advantage of being able to issue more frequent training without causing a major disruption to your operations. Because you’re able to distribute more training more frequently, everyone will be on the same page. As a result, internal and external communication will improve because everyone will be up to speed on company-wide expectations and processes.

4. Better Performance and Increased Production

   Getting the best possible performance from employees is every manager’s dream. While it may not guarantee perfect performance, introducing microlearning will undoubtedly bring about major improvements. With short bursts of training, your employees will learn what they need to know quicker. This means they’ll have a better understanding of what’s expected of them and what they need to do to succeed – so they’ll get more done in less time. Plus, because you can issue microlearning as often as necessary, you can constantly provide tips, tricks, and new techniques to ensure continued improvement.

5. Decreased Costs and Turnover

   Most employees, most people in fact, want to keep learning. Employees who want to succeed want continuing education and they appreciate any and all opportunities provided for self-improvement. Companies who invest in their employees by encouraging growth tend to have lower turnover rates than companies who provide little-to-no training. When employees feel appreciated and are empowered (both of which come as a result of continued training), they are less likely to look elsewhere for a better opportunity for career development.

Once you embrace the concept of microtraining, you’ll come to see why employees like it so much (they can quickly learn what they want when they need it) and how it will benefit your overall organization.