Microlearning: Effective Employee Training Within Microsoft Teams

In past decades, educators and development leaders have progressively depended on microlearning to provide their teams the knowledge and expertise to get the tasks done effectively. A rush in millennial employees has forced businesses to acknowledge the necessity for developing learner-centric employee training. Today most of the employees are experienced in adapting to the innovative technology trends and are efficient multi-taskers. But traditional training techniques are not suitable for them due to the lack of attention span. 

Studies say that employee training has to clear and concise. Microlearning continuously grows as an incredible tool for making an innovative employee training strategy with accurate and media-driven content. Microlearning ensures quicker learning delivery while retaining the quality of training and provides precise, short nuggets of significant content. 

The days of traditional classrooms, chalkboards, whiteboard markers etc., are gone. Oftentimes employers come across various training and development issues. But training geographically dispersed employees is a new challenge to the organizations. Using collaboration platforms can bring your distributed workforce together. In this 21st century, the work collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom have been transformed into learning platforms. 

This is where the concepts of microlearning become prominent. 

What is Microlearning?

Microlearning is a virtual teaching and training method that provides learning in bits, each aiming at a single learning objective. Being an opposite version of macro learning, where students read pages of every book to learn a particular concept, microlearning stands as an effective instructional approach. 

The microlearning method offers an amazing way to provide precise information to the queries of the learner. Microlearning can be created as any online content such as images, GIFs, video tutorials, infographics, audio podcasts, presentations, scenarios, assessments, quizzes etc. This learning approach boosts employee and organizational performance by ensuring quick delivery, easy learning, and instant applications with little effort. 

Characteristics of Microlearning

With attention spans becoming shorter every day, microlearning is the best way to handle this situation. In order to help learners, gain knowledge more effectively, information must be delivered at a rate that matches their focus skills. This will not only enhance learning transfer and engagement but also boost development speed. It will also help minimize development rates for organizations looking to get the most from their learning and development. 

The characteristics of microlearning include- 

• Focused on the single learning objective
  
  
• Utilize existing training content
  
  
• Short and valuable content with suitable visual
  
  
• Uses a variety of microlearning formats
  
  
• Provides a mobile-friendly design
  
  
• Accessible on demand
  
  
• Easy to adapt, preserve, recollect and apply
  
  

Bringing Micro-Learning within Microsoft Teams

As enterprises continue to be functional in these unprecedented times of global pandemic, the goal is to provide employee training through various forms of experimental learning. Today, employees can collaborate and communicate in real-time within Microsoft Teams, ensuring constant communication (similar to in-office scenarios). 

By bringing microlearning within Microsoft Teams, enterprises get a dedicated place to discover all relevant information. Employees already spend most of their working time on ai-powered employee helpdesks within MS Teams that provide conversational chatbot assistance to automate employee queries. Thus, it makes it a no-brainer to train employees there. 

Employees can collaborate with co-workers or teammates, create a more structured learning environment and remove unnecessary information unrelated to that specific project. Microlearning integrated within Microsoft Teams can save time, cost and enhance your employee performance. 

Microlearning to enhance employee training and performance

Most employees forget half of the conveyed knowledge as soon as they return from training sessions. All essential information will be scattered from their mind, and later they come back to old habits rather than acquaint with changes within their work. Moreover, the majority of employees don’t get ample time to complete their daily tasks. 

According to the statistics of Capgemini and LinkedIn study, employees feel that the training programs conducted by their organizations aren’t incredibly effective. Around 50% of employees found those pieces of training boring, unhelpful or they lack time to attend. 

As employee training is vital for every business, companies are bound to discover ground-breaking techniques to ensure that their employees have room for continuous learning. Encouraging employees to participate in interactive programs like orientation classes, product demo sessions, transformation to cutting-edge technologies etc., are core. From increasing enthusiasm across employees to the reinforcement stage, microlearning is an all-in-one solution. 

Now we will talk about how microlearning helps businesses to train their employees successfully: 

• Enhanced employee engagement:
  
  Microlearning is a successful employee engagement tool that can boost employee productivity and enhance learning through bite-sized information pieces. It is also helpful for companies who want to incorporate microlearning into employee training since its boost retention.
  
  According to Microlearning- A "Bite-Sized" Approach to Education, a report of the Journal of Applied Psychology (2017) says that the microlearning approach, i.e., learning in bite-sized pieces, is 17 % effective than traditional classroom studies.
  
  When you create learning content in bite-sized pieces, it looks like social media content, making it engaging, media-rich, easily and readily accessible for the learners. 
  
  
• Enhance and empower attention span
  
  Microlearning is an ideal instructional approach that can cater to the lack of attention among employees. The human brain picks up better when the learning content is conveyed in short bursts with the modules adequately spaced out to help emphasize the learning. When Short content modules are conveyed within minutes, it resolves the lack of attention issues. Hence, microlearning is an accessible tool to train employees without spending extra time.
  
  
• Accessible from, anyplace, any time, any device.
  
  Microlearning, collaborated with mobile learning, provides training in short modules which is handy from any place, anytime on any device, making it completely compatible. Being a flexible and user-friendly tool, microlearning allows employees to learn at their convenience. Employees can handle assignments proficiently without compromising on the works.
  
  
• Advanced technologies at your fingertips
  
  The growth of technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, smartphones, laptops and other gadgets has created an amazing boost to all sectors. Since the micro-learning modules are short, learners can leverage innovative technologies to partake in online lectures or training programs while traveling, workout sessions or any time they want.
  
  
• Fills skill gaps
  
  Every day, employees certainly have to deal with work deadlines, new projects and individual commitments. With traditional employee training programs, it is evident that employees won't get enough time to attend relevant skill programs. With microlearning, employees get bite-sized training to ensure that an employee is completely fitted out with all relevant skills. When the skill gaps are filled, employees feel motivated and enhance their performance.
  
  
• Boost employee satisfaction
  
  If you have microlearning’s short courses, you don’t require thick journal notebooks or 1000 words-document comprising information related to performing some role. Engaging contents help employees to learn the modules and remember them. Short modules can train employees with all the necessary skills, knowledge and statistics that they need.
  
  
• Cost-effective
  
  Microlearning is cost-effective than conducting a training program exclusively for employees. When you organize a traditional classroom training program, you will have to provide various study materials (both soft and hard copies) for each employee, which is expensive. Moreover, the traditional training program is outdated and perhaps won’t have the expected result. While in microlearning, the employees can access and reuse the study materials you created. 
  
  

Read More: How microlearning can improve employee training and experience? 

Conclusion- Microlearning is the Future of Employee Training

This unprecedented pandemic period has forced us to rethink and reshape our traditional approach towards education, employee training and attaining skills for the better.

Microlearning is the future of employee training and engagement as it is an all–in–one solution with essential information in bite-sized nuggets, making it effortless for learners to acquire, recall, and implement skills at the workplace. It can comprehensively improve learning processes among the employees and eventually boost business productivity.