Micro-learning: what is it and why should you pay attention to this L&D trend?
Employee development is crucial for any company. It is not only a popular benefit, but also a necessity without which companies cannot remain competitive. One of the current trends in employee development is micro-learning. What is it and why should you be interested in this principle?
What is micro-learning
The old, outdated idea of employee training was that employees were „locked“ in a room for a day or several days and a lecturer tried to teach them something. Micro-learning, however, represents a different approach. As Talent Management states, it involves continuous learning on the job in small doses. These „educational bites“ are often regular. Training is broken down into short, approximately ten-minute sections, and the employee spends time on each of these sections each workday.
Benefits of micro-learning
What are the benefits of micro-learning? Employees do not get overwhelmed. Information is given to them gradually and employees can thus digest it more efficiently. In addition, the newly-acquired skills can be immediately tested in practice and incorporated into the work routine of the employee more easily. If the employee were to acquire all this information at once, during a long and intense training session, it would be difficult for them to implement it all in their everyday work.
Rules of micro-learning
In order to implement the micro-learning principle effectively in your company, you need to keep a few principles in mind.
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Do not be too ambitious. Do not expect employees to learn for an hour every day. Five to ten minutes a day is enough. If you overwhelm your workers, they will soon become frustrated, disinterested or burned out.
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Choose the right tools. No matter how you organize your company's micro-learning system, you must always use the right tools. Whether it is your internal company system, a training database or peer-to-peer training, you always need to offer your employees easy-to-use tools.
- Not everything can be learned through micro-learning. Some topics simply cannot be taught through micro-learning as they require longer lessons and deeper concentration.
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