Curious About Microlearning in Corporate Training? [Definition, Use Cases, Implementation]

Today’s business environment is about efficiency: How can we achieve the biggest successes in the shortest time with the least possible spending? Microlearning is a natural fit for this conversation. 

You likely have an expectation of what “corporate training” means. It may involve a conference room, a presentation screen, and maybe trays of tiny, store-bought pastries. 

If you’ve been in the business world for any time, you’ve likely experienced half-day-long corporate learning and development retreats and lengthy, one-size-fits-all PowerPoint training presentations. But this doesn’t have to be the case. 

Microlearning is an approach to corporate training that requires neither a conference room nor a fifty-slide PowerPoint presentation. 

Let’s look at what we mean by microlearning in corporate training. We’ll cover the benefits, possible use-cases, and steps to implement a microlearning program of your own. 

What is Microlearning in Corporate Training? 

Before we dive into benefits, use-cases, and implementation plans, we must first establish what microlearning means in corporate training. Microlearning is an L&D method that eschews the idea that training must occur in large, hour-plus-long blocks. Instead, microlearning segments offer targeted, bite-sized training sessions that last no longer than ten minutes.

The key to microlearning is that each session covers a single topic and moves the learner toward a single learning objective. Keeping the training targeted allows the learner to focus on mastering one skill at a time, gaining useful knowledge while still fitting training into their work day. 

Related: How to Increase Knowledge Retention in Your L&D Program

Microlearning has been around since the 1960s, but it did not rise to popularity until the advent of the internet in the 1990s. When smartphones took the world by storm, educational mobile phone apps weren’t far behind. Though these applications vary in usefulness, the desire for microlearning was undeniable. 

With this understanding of microlearning’s purpose and origins, we can now examine the benefits and uses of microlearning for your organization. 

1. Benefits of Microlearning 

Microlearning offers your organization numerous benefits. The first benefit you can enjoy when implementing a microlearning training program in your organization is increased engagement. 

Research indicates that most people only remain engaged with a speaker for eighteen to twenty minutes. This finding means that if your training sessions feature speakers scrolling through PowerPoint slides for a full hour, attendees will be disengaged for two-thirds of the presentation. 

Keeping training sessions short and interactive makes learners more likely to remain focused. This increased focus brings us to the second benefit of microlearning: increased knowledge retention. 

By introducing key concepts in bite-sized chunks, microlearning lessens mental fatigue and embraces the advantages of pattern-based learning, helping the brain move new knowledge from short-term to long-term memory. 

Microlearning also allows for highly targeted training. Rather than seeking a single topic that may apply to your entire staff for a team retreat, you can tailor learning experiences and modules to specific roles, ensuring every team member gets the information they need to succeed.

Lastly, microlearning results in reduced L&D spending. Employees spending more time on the job and less time in retreats will waste fewer worker hours on ineffective training. Additionally, microlearning is done online rather than in person, saving your team money on travel, space rentals, and more. 

2. Top 4 Use-Cases for Microlearning 

You’ve seen the benefits microlearning can offer your organization. Next, we will take a look at the top use-cases for microlearning. Let’s examine four areas where microlearning may benefit your business.

• Routine Training:
  Microlearning is a fantastic solution if your organization needs to conduct regular refresher training around topics like compliance, IT security, safety, or HR-related topics.
  
  Instead of slogging through lengthy training sessions surrounding topics employees are already familiar with, they can receive targeted reminders of vital information, saving time and increasing the likelihood that learners will remember the training.

• Professional Skills Training:
  Looking to upskill or reskill current employees? Or perhaps your organization is changing a process or practice and needs to update the team on a new way of thinking and doing business? Microlearning can help teach new information in a targeted, relevant way that keeps employees engaged.

• New Technology Training:
  Adding a new tool to your company’s tech stack requires you to train current staff on the ins and outs of the new tool and how they must use it to complete their daily work. Shaking things up with new technology can be stressful for employees. Microlearning allows them to learn the functionality of the new tool in digestible chunks, making the process less overwhelming.

• Onboarding:
  Need to get a new hire up to speed fast? Microlearning can help. Using targeted modules that walk a new employee through the essentials of their day-to-day duties can help give them the skills they need to be confident on the job quickly—without burning them out with information overload.
  
  

3. 5 Step Process to Implement a Microlearning Training Program

If you are interested in implementing a microlearning training program in your organization after reading this post, you’ll need to follow this simple five-step process. 

1. Identify Skills Gaps: Examine your workforce and processes and identify the areas that need to be addressed with training. These gaps can be due to employee skillsets, new tools, changing processes, and more. 
2. Prioritize Training Efforts: As much as you may want to train everything at once, developing microlearning modules takes time and effort. Determine which training efforts must be addressed first. Prioritize your list of topics and start from the top. 
3. Create Content: Develop bite-sized content designed to address the skills gaps you’ve prioritized in the first two steps. If you partner with Capsim for your microlearning efforts, you can either create your own custom simulations specific to your organization’s needs or take advantage of one of our ready-to-use simulations from our extensive suite. 
4. Divide and Organize Content: Ensure that your training is organized and sequenced to help your employees build upon their existing knowledge and level up their skills. 
5. Monitor and Iterate: This project is not a one-and-done process. Once you’ve implemented a microlearning training program, you must monitor your employees’ results and iterate upon your training sessions and sequencing as needed.
   
   

Maximizing the Effectiveness of Microlearning in Corporate Training 

Armed with all the information from this post, it should be clear why microlearning is a rising star in the corporate training world. Microlearning programs can help you break free from one-size-fits-all training without increasing L&D spending.

Employees will appreciate the bite-sized nature of microlearning which makes training easier to digest and fit into their work schedules. To maximize the effectiveness of your microlearning in corporate training, you may want to explore microsimulations. Simulation training helps increase knowledge retention and engagement.

CapsimInbox’s microsimulations can walk your learners through a full day of decisions within thirty minutes or less. Request a self-guided demo today to see how CapsimInbox can help you implement microlearning in your corporate training programs!