Improve L & D effectiveness through customized training and microlearning

There is no consistent growth without consistent learning. Learning is the crucial component that leads companies to the success they desire. Besides, in this ever-changing world, if companies don’t upscale skills of their employees with evolving technologies, and business scenario, they may lose out in the competitive space.

Every business, however small or large, needs to work on the development of their employees. It’s easy to confuse training with learning and development but they aren’t the same. Training satiates a short-term goal whereas L&D focuses on the overall development of an employee in a broader sense. We shall uncover the difference further.

Through this blog post, we will walk you through everything you need to understand about L&D for your organization. First things first!

WHAT IS LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT?

It is an all-encompassing HR activity that focuses on the enhancement of employees’ skills, competency and knowledge in a larger scheme of the picture. The crux of the L&D process is to empower the employees to work better with a correct set of training and help them cultivate an attitude for overall better work performance. Learning is more focused on the acquisition of skills, knowledge and attitudes while development is concerned with the broadening of one’s knowledge in line with their development goal.

While training is usually compulsory for getting work done, development is more of a voluntary subject. Development looks at a long-term picture and aligns the individual goals of employees with that of organizations

As observed through the chart, training is more concerned with the direct immediate results whereas Development focuses on the long term and preparation for future job requirements. Besides, training is offered more for individualistic job fulfilment whereas development is offered to teams and groups so that the overall productivity of the organization remains prolific.

If you wish to retain top-notch talent in your organization and wish to gain maximum value of your employee’s capabilities, development should be a quintessential strategy of your employee’s program.

WHAT IS MICROLEARNING?

This holistic approach is concerned with skill-based learning and education. The entire process is divided into small learning units that are easy to understand and addresses individual concerns at a time. It helps employee solves the problems concerned to immediate task with an immediate solution.

Microlearning is quite a useful method given that it solves the core problems faced by employees while fulfilling their tasks. When equipped with micro training employees perform the job at hand more effectively and efficiently.

Microlearning is 17% more efficient in knowledge transfer compared to training provided by instructors. Moreover, since the content is curated taking into consideration human attention span, it ensures that the transfer of knowledge happens efficiently.

HOW TO FIT MICROLEARNING INTO YOUR OVERALL L&D STRATEGY?

1. IDENTIFY THE NEEDS OF YOUR ORGANIZATION.

The perfect way to introduce a learning program into your training strategies is to involve your employees. Involve the people who are going to get the training. Ask them what the most valuable learning to them would be. Now, identify the gaps in skills and education that are faced by each role. Skill gap analysis is the best way to get started here. Understand the areas where your employees are struggling currently.

Whenever you are implementing microlearning into your Learning and Development programs understand the needs of your organization. Do you need your employees to get more proficient in soft skills or does the nature of your job work requires employees to be more proficient at EXCEL sheets? Is it required of your employee to be abreast with all the latest complaints and legal regulations or do you simply want your employee to enhance their scope of work? When you get an answer to this you would be clearer with what the content of microlearning should focus on.

As an organization, you can create your own microlearning content or you could outsource customized training modules from someone outside. Talent Titan can help you here with its AI-driven skill gap identification tool and gamified training programmes. It offers complete customization for microlearning modules and allows you to get insights and analytics for effective training.

2. CREATE CONTENT

Keep it absolutely simple. You don’t want to disrupt the attention of learners. Whether you are creating content on your own or getting it outsourced, microlearning is effective only when the contents of learning are kept simple. Keep it visually rich with images, graphics, charts and infographics. The video should be easy flowing and engaging. Always focus on a topic and don’t try to divulge more topics into a single module.

If you are getting it outsourced, ensure that you choose the provider that assures you quality content, videos and enriching information.

3. ORGANIZE YOUR CONTENT

Once you have curated all the contents of microlearning ensure that they are easily accessible to employees as and when needed. Create modules and use clear keywords so that the employees can find the required learning module promptly. Creating the modules of learning for each job would allow your content to be consumed effectively and the transfer of knowledge becomes easy.

4. MONITORING AND REVIEWING

Every learning program is redundant if not reviewed and monitored timely. Review your employees after offering them microlearning training. Seek their feedback on the scope of improvements. Establish a correlation between learning and improvements in professional capabilities. Create personal goals for each employee and see if the implementation of microlearning programmes is helping them be effective.

Besides, consistently keep on improvising your content. Keep it updated and ensure to get rid of outdated content. Monitor and review the content bank of microlearning consistently to get the best results

BENEFITS OF MICROLEARNING INTO YOUR LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.

It helps the employees stay relevant in the market with their abreast skills.
It helps in reinforcing the skills quickly.
Employees can get access to microlearning modules as and when needed and can immediately get back to work.
It is more effective than coach training offered in groups.
Employees can refurbish the processes and skills that are rarely used.
Since Microlearning is fun learning, employees can make gainful use of their idle time to upscale themselves.
It’s easier to reinforce boring but important details in the mind of employees through microlearning.
It is an independent learning module. All you need to supervise is content quality, consumption and its effect on performance.
It’s a pull learning content that employees choose to enjoy. Instead of pushing them to train forcefully, carefully curated microlearning content can help you gain the voluntary participation of your employees.

Understanding the chart above, we can decode that digitization has made today’s learners overwhelmed. Information access is no longer a problem in today’s world. The problem is over information. Microlearning eliminates that aspect by presenting only requisite and useful knowledge to the learner thereby capturing their attention. If you could implement it correctly, microlearning could proficiently improve the quality of your learning and development programmes by multi-fold.

WHERE TO IMPLEMENT MICROLEARNING IN YOUR LEARNING PROGRAMMES?

Microlearning is effective everywhere. You just need to get it right. This brings us to the next part of our blogpost which is customized training.

WHAT IS CUSTOMIZED TRAINING?

Custom training programmes as the name suggests are the customized training modules designed specifically for an individual firm, categories of employees and a job role. The training module is customized to satisfy the personal needs of these firms and employees. You see every job role is different, every business unit is different. Then why do we adapt the generalized training solution for all?

In order to get efficient results of training and superior performance of your employees, you need to offer them training that addresses their problems at work, skill gaps and help them perform their best by equipping them with requisite knowledge and skills.

Custom learning modules can be tracked with intelligent AI driven analytic reports. Moreover, they are easy to be incorporated using Rapid e-Learning techniques.

HOW DOES CUSTOM LEARNING SOLVE THE BARRIERS OF THE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS?

L&D programmes are ineffective when delivered through the same age-old methods. Getting a corporate trainer and getting everyone trained for hours at length don’t work these days. Training needs to be interactive, short, meaningful, gainful and aspiring. With Customized training modules, you can identify the problems within your organization and training needs in particular segments. To address these problems, you can devise training modules in form of videos, case studies, games, assessments, ideations, and other fun activities.

Training does not necessarily need to teach something. It can be fun competitive activity in which employees voluntarily participate to prove their best mettle. With Talent Titan, you get customized training solutions that are designed to improve learning effectiveness. With our holistic approach and methods like unbiased game assessments, interactive role-plays and customized learning modules, you can identify the high potential talent in your organization and train them for challenging roles.

A customized training program allows flexibility to modify content delivery for the better absorption of knowledge. Hence, it is effective for sure. And you can always ensure the success of learning modules with tracking systems and analytic reports.

Most of the methods of training are ineffective because the training methods are rigid. Customized training programmes are prepared keeping in mind the people and organization. Tools for training are designed after identifying the needs and purpose that needs to be achieved. Customized training programmes help you train your employees in terms of strategic thinking, critical decision making, interpersonal skills and adaptability to new technologies with utmost ease. When customized solutions are prepared keeping people in mind, engaging content flows. This kind of content doesn’t distract the learner and ensures easy transfer of knowledge.

Custom training programmes give you a clear pathway to train an employee. Right from onboarding them to equipping them with the company’s policies to acquaint them with the work and widening their scope of knowledge, you get a clear pathway of what to offer next

Custom training solutions focus mainly on web learning modules that can be accessed by employees anytime through their phones. The interactive video modules and fun gamified assessments help employees stay engaged and motivated throughout their training sessions.

HOW IS MICROLEARNING AND CUSTOM TRAINING RELATED?

Microlearning is always digital, and the larger chunk of custom training is also digital. In fact, custom training could be incorporated into every learning and development program to get improved results. In the end, the very purpose of the L&D program is to ensure the superior performance of employees and exceptional achievements by them. When microlearning is customized as per the organization’s need and its structure, it legit gets effective. It is therefore important to add a custom approach to every L&D program of yours to improve the efficiency of your entire organization.

In a nutshell, you don’t need to spend large on your learning and development. You need to spend wisely. Spend on effective methods. Spend on methods that address your particular problem. And spend on methods that give you quantifiable and comparative results. Because monitoring is as important as implementing Learning and Development policies in your organization. With Talent Titan you get to empower your top talent with the best skills and train them for challenging roles. We offer you the best L&D solutions that can take care of custom needs of your company, and help you unleash the full potential of your employees.

Get in touch with us and get started with a Learning and Development program for your organization.