Microlearning: The New Wave Of Corporate Training

Corporate training is always important for organizations to maintain the skills and capabilities of their employees. Irrespective of the department they belong to and their designations, corporate training allows your employees to add more value to their offerings and help you attain your organizational goals more effectively. 

Corporate training comes in handy to serve several purposes – whether you want to train onboarded employees newly, help your employees switch to a new technology/tool, or make them learn a new skill that would add to their productivity. When it comes to training your employees, the sky is the limit. Whether it is the CEO or an intern, training is a never-ending process and helps you ensure the smooth functioning of your organization. 

However, corporate training is too easy for an organization to pull off effectively despite all its benefits. There are several challenges faced by managers in getting their employees trained effectively. 

Major Challenges In Corporate Training

1. Limited Attention Span
   
   In 2021, one of the biggest challenges companies face in getting their employees trained is their limited attention span. Over time, essentially due to excessive consumption of microblogging content, the attention span of individuals has gone down. Employees today are not too comfortable sitting for long training sessions and reading lengthy handbooks to get trained.
   
   Still, if they are asked to attend long training sessions, they are less likely to retain the information provided, hampering the overall purpose of training.
   
   
2. Training Remote Employees
   
   While training on-premise employees are relatively more accessible as it takes place in a more controlled manner, training remote employees often gets challenging for companies. Without their physical presence, it becomes difficult for the trainers to keep track of the sessions and measure the corporate training provided to the employees.
   
   
3. Lack Of Engaging Content
   
   The use of plain text is no longer reliable for making your training sessions successful. Employees today need engaging content to assimilate and process information better.
   
   
4. Lack Of Personalization
   
   Most training sessions are not personalized as the trainer cannot cater to the individual needs of every single employee. Especially in the case of training a large number of employees, they are often required to follow the trainer's instructions instead of having training resources that are designed according to their requirements.
   
   
5. High Training Costs
   
   Hosting seminars, webinars, and calling industry experts to train your employees is likely to get expensive. Especially if you host training sessions every time a new bunch of employees joins your organization, you are likely to spend a fortune getting them trained by allocating a significant portion of your budget.
   
   All these (and many more) challenges can be tackled by implementing microlearning within your organization.
   
   

What Is Microlearning?

As the name suggests, microlearning is a training methodology where the learners are provided with bit-sized chunks of resources daily. Here, you can get your employees trained by providing them with training content that does not take up more than ten minutes of their time daily. 

Microlearning is a fairly new mode of digital learning where you can undertake effective corporate training for your employees. All you need to do is have a centralized platform, add all your training materials to it, and have your employees access these materials according to their convenience. 

Microlearning helps you provide a refreshing change to your employees from the conventional training sessions. Whether they are working on-premise or remotely, this digital learning methodology ensures that your corporate training is successful.

Major Benefits Of Microlearning

1. Training Remote Employees
   
   One of the biggest pros of microlearning is that it can be used for training employees working remotely. As you are providing all relevant training materials to them right on their digital devices, your employees can access them from any location and at any time. This is why microlearning can also be used for training employees located overseas who are an integral part of your organization.
   
   
2. Focusing On What Is Important
   
   With microlearning, you can stop beating around the bush and concentrate only on the most important aspects. If your employees are well-versed with the basics of the skills to be learned, you can directly provide them with learning resources that get straight to the point.
   
   
3. Catering To Limited Attention Span
   
   Microlearning does not require your employees to spend several hours every day getting themselves trained in specific skills. It allows you to provide limited content that is in sync with their attention span. This results in your employees retaining more information and knowledge offered to them, resulting in successful training sessions.
   
   
4. Keeping Your Employees Upgraded
   
   Microlearning follows a fairly modern approach to corporate training and can be used to keep your employees upgraded to skills, tools, and technologies that matter the most. This helps you and your team stay relevant to the latest technological trends in the industry, thereby improving the quality of your operations.
   
   
5. Instant Application Of Knowledge Gained
   
   Especially in training remote employees, microlearning allows them to apply the lessons learned to their work immediately. As the training is digital and does not take up their time, your employees can start implementing the new skills to the tasks they must complete right away.
   
   
6. No Clashes With Work Hours
   
   Employees often have to sacrifice their work hours to obtain corporate training. Microlearning allows them to consume the training content at their convenience without affecting their work hours. This way, you can have your employees get trained before or after their dedicated work hours. Even if they consume training resources during work, it would be as good as taking a 10-minute break!
   
   
7. Better Employee Experience
   
   How you train your employees has a significant impact on their overall experience. When they are subjected to lengthy and tedious training sessions, they are uncomfortable attending, and the employee experience takes a hit. However, microlearning ensures that the training experience of your employees is seamless and effective all the way.
   
   
8. Allowing Employees To Create Training Content
   
   One of the best ways to optimize microlearning is to let experienced employees create the training content for their peers. They can share articles, notes, videos, and other relevant material with other employees by adding them to the concerned platform. Especially in training the new hires, this helps the employees obtain valuable insights and assistance about the skills to be learned through microlearning.
   
   
9. Make Use Of Engaging Content
   
   Although microlearning does not require your employees to spend long hours getting trained, you can increase its effectiveness by adding more engaging content. It is always advisable to add videos, images, animations, infographics, and other engaging forms of content to ensure higher retention of information.
   
   
   
   
10. Use AI To Improve Training Sessions
    
    The use of AI and machine learning allows you to ensure your employees' holistic training and development. A microlearning platform equipped with AI learns about every employee's needs, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses as they keep getting trained. This makes the platform provide valuable suggestions to your employees based on their capabilities and learning styles.
    
    Also, the use of AI in microlearning makes the training sessions more personalized, resulting in a better learning experience for your employees.
    
    

The Final Word 

This was all you should know about microlearning and its features if you are new to the concept. It is always advisable to incorporate new digital learning methods to make corporate training cost-effective and more personalized. Always remember that successful corporate training sessions lead to increased employee productivity and engagement within your organization.