What is Microlearning and How Can Your Business Benefit from It?

Any business owner wants their workers to be sharp, skilled, and in the know. In the digital age, microlearning tools are getting very popular, especially in the startup scene and in large companies. Microlearning is basically what it sounds like: a Learning Management System (LMS) that lets people learn new skills with mini, bite-sized lessons. So what is microlearning exactly and how can your business benefit from it?

What is microlearning?

Microlearning is the concept of using short (usually under 4 minutes) lessons to teach people. The content is often created in video form and each lesson has a very specific goal (e.g. how to use keyboard shortcuts in Gmail).

Short content can be especially effective in the workplace because of the limited time employees have to dedicate to learning. According to Grovo, a market leader in the microlearning industry, micro-lessons are 58% more engaging, 300% faster to develop, and are completed 97% of the time.

Why is microlearning so effective?

Many believe that microlearning fits today’s modern learner because of what the world has become in the face of technology. According to Bersin by Deloitte, the modern worker has about 1% of their time to dedicate to training and development.

That adds up to about 24 minutes per week. Not much, is it? Now, consider that in the past (and still today), workers are sent off to trainings and workshops, costing employees time and employers money. Besides that, the world is moving so quickly that workers need to constantly stay updated. As Grovo CEO and co-founder Jeff Fernandez says, “What makes you great at your job today is not going to make you great at the job in a year.”

Besides the limited time employees have, attention spans are lower these days thanks to the many distractions available to everyone (i.e. the Internet and smartphones). Today’s people have become less and less patient as well. Online marketers and designers now have between 5 and 10 seconds to grab someone’s attention. Otherwise, as Donnie Brasco always says, “Forget-about-it”.

Microlearning is also great as a “refresher” tool. When someone just needs to brush up on a certain topic/skill, browsing through micro-lessons makes this easier than wading through pages and pages of content. A good micro-lesson should exist independently from the other lessons to avoid the need to re-learn an entire topic.

Online microlearning can also be very engaging. Companies like Grovo use live videos, animations and even gamification to inspire and motivate learners. Clients can even opt to have content created specifically for their company.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits to microlearning is that learners can take these lessons at their own pace. If lessons and follow-ups don’t take more than 5-10 minutes, workers can spread these lessons out throughout their workday/workweek.

All of these reasons sum up why microlearning has become so popular and effective for today’s learners.

Can microlearning work for your company?

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The beauty of online microlearning is that administrators can track the progress of the learners. They can stay updated on the success and compare who is taking (and “passing”) the lessons and what exactly they’re doing. If the lesson provider has many engaging lessons, this could very well motivate their employees to learn even more skills than they had planned to.

Naturally, microlearning can be used for many reasons, from skills development to onboarding new employees. However, these micro-lessons can even be used by C-level employees as well. If someone in upper management already has lots of knowledge, but needs to get updated on a new concept or technology, these micro-lessons are there to be used on a need-to-learn basis.

Conclusion

Microlearning platforms can help bridge the skills gap that exists in every company. The key is identifying what gaps there are and finding a solution. With everything being digitised these days, it’s no wonder that education is turning into e-learning and the future of employee development lays in microlearning.