Money talks, the rest can walk. In your business, you’re on a mission to spend money on what makes sense and save where you can. It seems backwards that something small like microlearning could affect your bottom line so much, but we’re going to tell you how it does and why you should make more use of this little training powerhouse.
Microlearning, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a brief slice of instruction, usually delivered as performance support to deskless employees on the job. “Performance support” is a new concept for eLearning, one for which microlearning is especially well suited. The idea is to provide support to your employees when and where they need it so they don’t need to break away from their task. Staff can access the content, take it in, and then move on having received the information they need, right when they needed it. And we mean micro! Video content usually runs from 15 seconds to less than 3 minutes, the shorter the better. Text content needs to be as brief as possible, and hopefully mostly graphics to eliminate the need for reading comprehension.
Video saves you money in training because it’s easier to understand than reading or even looking at graphics. Have you seen the statistic that video is processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text? Sixty. Thousand. Times. Faster. As we said before, keep them short but filled with the right information so that your staff can view and get out. The less time spent viewing puts your employee back to work faster and makes them more productive. ROI, here we come.
When you film your micro training content, use in-house videos shot by company employees. No need for big project budgets and writers, just get in, get the shot and audio, and get out.
As you’ve figured out, microlearning is best viewed on mobile devices. Not every employee needs a computer, which can cut costs from the IT budget to support your individual locations. Create a policy for safely installing your eLearning software on employee devices that includes permission to erase lost or stolen devices. A “BYOD” system (Bring Your Own Device) will drastically cut down on hardware purchase costs,
A post about the cost benefits of microlearning should be short, don’t you think? Long enough for you to see the financial gains to be made from concise content and wrapping up when you’ve got the information you need to deliver the goods. So go micro!
For more info check out our latest ebook for other modern techniques: How Modernizing Your Learning Can Positively Affect Your Bottom Line
