9 Microlearning Best Practices for Your Business

In today’s fast-paced world, businesses are constantly seeking ways to keep up with trends and retain talent. One rising trend is microlearning. Microlearning is a learning approach where bite-sized pieces of information are taught and delivered through mobile devices or other digital platforms. And it’s become an increasingly popular way to train and develop employees. In this blog, we’ll explore nine best practices for using microlearning for employee education.

What is Microlearning for Business?

We have been using microlearning for a long time, even if we didn’t realize it. Infographics, short-form social media videos, YouTube, and short podcasts all could fall under the category of “micro e-learning.”

But this approach to knowledge sharing is still relatively new in the workplace.

Microlearning for business refers to the use of short, focused pieces of information to help employees develop skills, knowledge, and expertise. It’s designed to deliver content in a way that is easily digestible and accessible, allowing employees to learn at their own pace. 

Microlearning can take many forms, including videos, podcasts, infographics, quizzes, and interactive simulations.

The Benefits of Microlearning for Employee Training

One of the key benefits of microlearning is that it can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your employees and business. You can deliver targeted training to employee groups without requiring them to spend hours in a training session. And you can share microlearning content to be consumed on demand. This helps fit learning and development into your employees’ busy schedules.

When done right, microlearning can:

• Improve knowledge retention. It’s 17% more effective in training employees compared to traditional courses. 
• Increase employee engagement from 15 to 90 percent.

Key Elements of Microlearning Content

Let’s break down the key elements of microlearning so you can provide the most effective microlearning content for your employees. Microlearning must be:

1. Relevant to your employees and the work they do. A great way to do this is by targeting and personalizing the courses you share as much as possible.
2. Bite-sized content that’s easy to consume and re-watch, if needed.
3. Visual to enhance learning (we prefer videos as the best medium for microlearning)
4. Measurable so you can see what content is most popular and successful with your audience.
5. Accessible so users can engage where and when they want.

Ultimately, the most important key to microlearning being successful is that it’s learner-focused. Is the content, format, and delivery method going to set your employees up for success or not?

Microlearning Best Practices

At theEMPLOYEEapp, we think that it’s essential to pick the right microlearning partner to be able to provide expert, scalable content for your employees. That’s why we and our partners follow these important microlearning best practices. 

Let’s break them down.

1. Keep Microlearning Content Under Ten Minutes

First off, it’s not microlearning if it’s too long. That completely defeats the point of investing in short-form e-learning content for your teams. And the reason for that is that shorter content is optimal for learning, fitting into employee schedules, and avoiding losing your employees’ attention. 

But there’s also an accessibility component here. Short content is better for a wider variety of learning styles. Keeping your microlearning videos short and focused ensures that everyone gets a chance to engage.

2. Make it Learner-Focused

In today’s fast-paced world, learners are looking for learning experiences that are convenient and relevant to them. By focusing on your employees’ needs, you can tailor the experience to individual learning styles, knowledge levels, and interests.

3. Select the Right Content Medium

You have to pick the right way to share educational content with employees. We believe that video is the best method for education because it’s the most engaging. Videos also combine audio and visual cues, making it the most effective way to teach something in a short amount of time.

While videos might require an upfront investment, they can be used and rewatched many times for maximum ROI.

4. Share Training on Mobile Channels

At theEMPLOYEEapp, we’re big believers in mobile. Although some of your employees might choose to access their microlearning content through your employee intranet, many might want the option to engage on the go or from home.

Giving employees choice will always ensure higher participation in any work program you implement.

5. Target Microlearning Content to Your Audience

As communicators, you know that targeting content is critical. Employees will tune out your messages if you share things that don’t matter to them or their jobs.

That’s why it’s so important to target microlearning. Managers might need a very different level of detail or information than your hourly line workers, for instance. So, make sure you learn what those nuances are between employee groups and share content accordingly.

6. Connect Microlearning Lessons to Your Goals and Values

Like any other communication campaign, you should be tying microlearning back to your company’s values. 

• What are you trying to achieve as an organization? 
• How can you share content that resonates with your mission or values?
• What behaviors are you trying to reinforce?

7. Make Microlearning Fun

Learning shouldn’t be a chore. One way to get employees more engaged is to make your microlearning content more enjoyable. You can do this by:

• Gamifying content and rewarding employees for engaging with courses.
• Using storytelling to incorporate real-life examples and case studies so content is more meaningful and impactful.
• Adding humor to your microlearning campaigns to break up the monotony.
• Letting employees create their own content and examples of best practices in real life.

8. Don’t Make it Mandatory

Forcing your employees to use your microlearning resources is a bad idea. For one, not all employees need it. But they also aren’t in grade school anymore. Your employees are all adults, and it’s up to them if they want to use the resources you provide.

9. Measure What’s Working

We’ve said it time and time again: you can’t improve what you don’t measure. The same goes for your microlearning campaigns.

Tracking engagement on your microlearning videos will tell you what’s resonating and what isn’t. But you can take this a step further by collecting qualitative feedback from employees. You might be surprised to learn what does interest employees and what more they might want from the program.

How to Improve Microlearning Content for Employees

If you’re already using microlearning content in some form, but don’t feel like you’re getting the most out of it, follow these microlearning best practices to improve your e-learning content.

• Are you following learning objectives? Do you have goals for your program or are you randomly sharing microlearning content with your teams?
• Is your content focused enough? There are a lot of different topics you might want to tackle with your educational videos. Are you jumping around too much? Or are they more campaign-focused to let employees focus on one important topic at a time?
• Are you giving your employees a chance to practice what they’ve learned? More important than quiz-taking is real-world experience. A great way to make your microlearning content more relevant is to make sure your employees have a chance to put what they’ve learned into action.
• Do your employees have a chance to provide feedback about their microlearning experience? Maybe they don’t like the medium you’re using for education, or maybe they want more or less content. You won’t learn what employees like and don’t like without asking.

Why Choose theEMPLOYEEapp’s Microlearning Platform

We get it. Investing in microlearning can feel like a big undertaking at first. But that’s why we recommend partnering with a microlearning provider, rather than going it alone.

Using theEMPLOYEEapp’s microlearning platform offers a range of benefits, including:

1. Flexibility. Choose from our catalog of courses to share exactly the content you want, without having to wait for it to be produced.
2. Scalable. Because the content is already created, you can easily scale your microlearning program to all your employees.
3. Cost-effective. Our pricing is far more cost-effective than trying to create all your microlearning content in-house. 
4. Analytics-backed. Measure the success of your training videos on our analytics platform.

Microlearning is the future of employee development. Are you ready to see it in action?