How microlearning fits into a modern approach to frontline training

Microlearning content is focused on the moment of need, helping employees target the most critical information required to do their jobs. This is how people learn and solve problems in everyday life, which means the microlearning experience is more familiar and comfortable for employees.

If you want to implement a solid frontline training strategy that positions every employee for success, your microlearning strategy must include these five principles.

1. A clear business objective.

We definitely don’t want to play favorites but, out of all the fundamentals we mention, this one tops the list. There’s no getting around it. Microlearning must focus on a single problem, not an unmanageable pile of interconnected issues. If you can’t identify a clear, measurable business objective you want to achieve, then just stop right here. (Think specific, like boosting customer satisfaction scores by 50%, or increasing loyalty card sign ups by 25%).

2. Desired employee knowledge and behavior.

After you know what your goals are, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty details of the actions employees will be expected to take in order to achieve them. This starts with understanding the behaviors your employees need to demonstrate on the job, then you can outline the knowledge they will need to get there. Bonus: this helps you separate need-to-know information from nice-to-know.

Maybe ladder accidents are on the rise. If so, employees would need to learn things like:

a) How to inspect a ladder to ensure it’s safe to use.

b) The proper steps for climbing a ladder.

c) Which ladders to use in specific situations.

3. Scientifically proven brain hacks.

Let’s be honest: If employees can’t remember their training or how to apply it on the job, it’s a waste of time and money. That’s where brain hacks come in. Ever heard of the forgetting curve? It shows that people forget 90% of what they learn within 30 days if it isn’t reinforced. That’s why effective training applies proven brain science, including

a) Spaced repetition – Practicing a new topic repeatedly over a period of time to deepen memory.

b) Retrieval practice – Using questions to strengthen memory by forcing the brain to recall information.

c) Confidence-based assessment – Measuring an employee’s expressed confidence in a topic to improve memory and self-awareness.

4. Anywhere, anytime access.

No question, employees are swamped these days. They’re asked to know more, do more and deliver more—often without any added support. It’s even worse for frontline workers, like sales associates, field service workers, delivery drivers and contact center agents. Taking them off the floor to sit through hours of training is a scheduling nightmare. And what manager wants to handle the fallout from lost productivity time?

The most effective training fits into employees’ day-to-day workflow without pulling them away from the places they need to perform. By tapping into existing tech they use on the job (like mobile devices and point of sales systems), it’s easy to deliver training to employees in just a few minutes each day. And, with information always at their fingertips on these devices, it’s just as easy for them to do a quick lookup when they have a question. The result? No more guessing when it comes to figuring out the correct actions to take on the job.

5. Meaningful metrics.

Feeling limited by test scores and completions? Not anymore! Microlearning helps you collect a boat load of meaningful data as employees engage in training activities almost every day. You’ll glean insights into the types of content they consume, the information they know and don’t know and if they are able to apply that knowledge correctly on the job. And with all this information, you can directly connect how training impacts the business objectives you outlined at the start. Not making the right progress? You’ll know sooner, so you can pinpoint trouble areas and proactively adjust training to hit your planned targets.

Advantages of using microlearning in your frontline training strategy

Most of us have been conditioned to believe there is a place and time for learning. We’ve gone to school and sat in rooms for hours at a time. At work, we’ve been scheduled for classes and all-day workshops. Even digital experiences tend to have schedules and requirements. This simply isn’t how people really learn. We are learning and improving every second of every day while we engage in our daily activities.

To implement a successful modern training strategy, you need to buy into the inherent value of helping your frontline learn in the flow of work using microlearning. Here’s a list of huge advantages waiting for you on the other side of adopting this mindset.

1. Respond to business needs faster

The targeted nature of microlearning will speed up your development and implementation times because you will build just the content necessary to solve the specific business problem at hand.

And the continuous learning experience that microlearning supports will provide you with ongoing access to your employees, reducing the need to schedule people away from the operation for training.

Overall, delivering microlearning content through a continuous experience will help you become more proactive in addressing business challenges before they become business failures.

2. Increased employee engagement

Microlearning requires a focus on value. By getting rid of the fluff and targeting meaningful workplace problems, you can provide a clear WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for your employees. And, by fitting the learning experience into the workflow, you lessen the extra effort required on their part to access training.

All told, this can radically increase engagement and all but eliminate the need to hunt people down to complete required training. See how it’s possible to get 80%+ engagement in a learning platform.

3. Make information easier to access, consume and retain

Your modern training strategy should align the way you support frontline employees with the way people actually learn. This makes for a more human learning experience that’s easier to consume and remember for the long term.

And, because you can easily fit microlearning content into the daily workflow, employees have less barriers in their way when attempting to access valuable development opportunities.

4. Focus on an individual employee’s need

Since the right approach to microlearning cuts out the fluff by defining which specific business goals to focus on, you can easily target your content delivery. Instead of generic, one-size-fits-all training, you can provide just what an employee needs to perform their best. And, as we will explore later, modern training will set the stage for continued innovation and help you create an even more personalized, adaptive learning experience.

5. Prove the impact of learning

When we discuss the steps for building effective micro-content, we’ll show you how to connect your effort to a specific, measurable business goal. This value chain also works in the opposite direction. Because you’re aligned to this goal in your development process, you’re in a better position to show the direct impact of your training on this goal after implementation.

How to create your microlearning strategy

How can you help evolve your organization from relying on place-and-time training that happens once or twice a year to a continuous microlearning experience that’s embedded within every workday?

Truth time: Evolving to a modern training approach is not an overnight transition. It requires a slow and measured evolution of your company’s mindset towards training and the role it plays in the business. Instead of just focusing on getting training over with so you can check the completion box, all your stakeholders—from executives to frontline employees—must recognize (and buy into) the importance of continuous microlearning to keep you more agile than the competition and ready for anything.

Luckily, the fundamentals we’ve discussed so far are designed with this evolution in mind. So, you’ll be able to build your case and show value quickly, then rapidly iterate and evolve your overall learning strategy. Here are some things to keep in mind as you go:

Start building a business case

Since many people in your organization may not be familiar with the concepts behind a modern training approach—like setting business goals first, using microlearning content to keep it digestible and tapping into brain science to help employees remember more—you’ll need to gather some strong evidence to prove that this is a viable strategy. Look for ways to leverage existing expertise. This could come in the form of external partners and vendors who specialize in microlearning and modern training principles.

You could also lean on peers from similar organizations who have already begun their transformation. Take advantage of opportunities to talk with those who are a bit further on in the journey, so you avoid making unnecessary mistakes along the way.

Bring your peers and key stakeholders into the conversation

Making a lasting impact requires a fundamental shift in how people view learning at work. Many business leaders are still only familiar with place-and-time training that happens at a formal event several times during the year. And many learning and development professionals have made their living executing only traditional types of corporate training.

Use this article, and other practical information, to expose people to modern training principles. Contextualize the information by hosting informal conversations and gathering insights about the types of business challenges a modern training approach could solve before you start creating a grand strategy.

Assess your existing content and tactics

Some of your existing training content, tools and technology will stay. A lot will probably either go away or require some reworking. Once you know what works within your organization, you can make informed decisions about how you evolve your tactics to shape your bigger, long-term learning and development strategy.

At the same time, you must have the courage to ask tough questions and let go of content that’s been around a long time and may have been expensive to create. Staying focused on business results and achieving measurable impact will make these decisions much easier.

Get closer to your audience

Effective training is all about helping employees change their behaviors to solve problems and get results. To meet this need, you have to understand your audience’s day-to-day job requirements and challenges. Do your research to identify where moments of need commonly arise on the job and could benefit from microlearning. When are the best moments in the day to insert microlearning experiences? What access points and devices are available for use in formulating your strategy? What content formats can employees consume most easily while on the job? Will you need additional motivation to get frontline employees engaged in a new approach to learning at work?

Avoid the urge to overhaul your entire strategy right away

You don’t need to immediately change all 3000 courses in your learning management system (LMS) to a microlearning approach to be successful. Instead, select one topic—the one that’s the most important challenge facing your organization and can be measured. Outline how you would apply modern training principles to address this problem, even if you’re still using some more traditional tactics at the same time. Showcase how microlearning could make a positive impact. Then, once you put your strategy into practice and see some success, you can use this proof point to influence your stakeholders and expand your strategy. This will also expose employees to a new method of training and on-the-job support so they can begin to shift their own mindsets.

Determine the process for designing and deploying microlearning resources.

Before you can get hands-on and build microlearning content, you need to have the right people, processes and technologies in place. When you identify a business need, who will you need to engage to execute the necessary design project? Who will do the work? How will subject matter experts and end users be involved? How will new content be deployed and communicated? These are all familiar project management considerations, but they must be especially well defined to execute with the agility and speed required to solve business problems with microlearning.

Best practices for building microlearning content

We’ve established that microlearning content isn’t just short videos. We’ve also identified that it’s not simply smaller versions of the content you have been using for years. So, what is it, and how do you build it to enable continuous, targeted learning?

Too often, organizations focus on creating training content first. This approach doesn’t make any sense in a modern business. It’s easy to miss the mark on what employees really need. And the result is a collection of vast content catalogues that are expensive and almost never used to their full potential.

Before building anything, it’s important to identify the result you want to achieve. This results-first approach is a critical framework for building right-fit microlearning content.

Diagram of Axonify's results-first approach

1. Begin with the end in mind

What business problem are you trying to solve, and how will you MEASURE the results? You may have to push your peers and stakeholders to nail down as specific a goal as possible. Push the conversation towards the factors that led to this discussion in the first place. There are likely specific incidents taking place within the business that have created a need.

Let’s take a safety example. Your stakeholder may come to you with the request to improve the company’s safety culture. That sounds great, but how do you measure culture? Ask for specifics on workplace incidents that have led to the safety culture conversation. Find a measurable goal that you can address with microlearning. This effort will eventually become the foundation of a larger effort required to foster a safety culture, but your focus will remain on solving a specific problem.

To continue the example, let’s assume that back injuries are the biggest safety problem in the business right now. Reducing incidents of back injuries by 80% is now our measurable business result target.

2. Identify the required behaviors

What do employees have to DO to achieve the targeted result? What will the necessary behavior change look like when observed within the operation? You will again likely have to challenge your stakeholders to get specific when it comes to your goal. Break down the steps necessary to be successful in the selected topic.

In our safety example, you might decide that employees must perform the following actions to reduce back injuries when lifting:

Keep elbows tucked in
Bend from the knees
Avoid twisting your back
Use proper safety equipment

3. Distill the foundational knowledge

What do employees have to KNOW to execute the required behaviors? Isolating this part provides you with the opportunity to separate need-to-know from nice-to-know information to keep your training focused on the result. Nice-to-know information can eventually be made available on demand, but your microlearning content will focus on just the critical knowledge required to execute the identified behaviors.

To execute a safe lift, employees must:

Know the steps required to execute a safe lift
Recognize improper lifting techniques
How how to properly use related safety equipment

4. Build content

Now you’re ready to make a content decision. What’s the best way to share the required knowledge to drive behavior change and, ultimately, achieve the targeted result? You should be open to a variety of content format options rather than defaulting to a traditional course.

To improve knowledge and behavior related to safe lifting, employees will receive:

A 3-minute video providing an overview of safe lifting techniques
Reinforcement questions to drive long-term retention of this knowledge
A job aid with step-by-step reminders that can be accessed on demand

Microlearning content ideas

As you can see in our example, microlearning content can take a variety of formats. Rather than be limited to just SCORM courses, you can expand your toolkit and match the delivery method to the needs of your employees. Here’s a list of potential content types that fit the microlearning experience:

MICROLEARNING DELIVERY

Video
Questions
Interactive module
Article
Job aids

REINFORCEMENT

Questions
Refresher module/video
Email newsletter
Practice exercises
Flash cards
Reflection activities

ON-DEMAND KNOWLEDGE

Blog post
Demonstration video
Article
Job aid
Operational guideline

PERFORMANCE SUPPORT

Designated Subject Matter Expert list
Online discussion forum
Employee help telephone line/email
Enterprise social media platform
Help Desk hours
Question and answer application

How to evaluate a microlearning solution

Many vendors and consultants are aligning their marketing to the microlearning trend. That’s why you shouldn’t rush into a buying decision. Make sure you take time to pause and ask the right questions to find out if an offering truly aligns to a holistic, right-fit training approach that’s going to get meaningful results for your business.

Here’s a set of questions to ask when evaluating any “microlearning” solution. The more YES answers you get, the more likely the solution will provide value to your organization.

Microlearning methodology

Does the vendor position their value based on business results rather than learning and development outcomes?
Does the vendor focus on identifying measurable business goals BEFORE building content?
Does the vendor focus on behavior change rather than learning or completions?
Does the vendor consistently apply evidence-based learning science principles, such as spaced repetition and retrieval practice?
Can the vendor provide case studies that demonstrate proven, measurable business results?
Will the vendor provide (free) enablement support to help your team develop their skills to execute a microlearning strategy?

Functionality

Can employees access the solution on the internet-accessible devices they use on the job?
Can employees access the solution from their personal mobile devices?
Does the solution support the use of mixed content modalities (video, documents, questions, etc.)?
Does the solution include real-time reporting on employee knowledge and behavior change?
Does the solution provide actionable reporting to help managers coach on the job?
Does the solution integrate with business data sources?
Does the solution integrate with your other learning and support systems?

User experience

Is the user experience simple and intuitive (no user training required)?
Is the user experience familiar (similar to consumer digital apps)?
Can users search for information quickly in the moment of need?
Is the user experience focused on continuous learning rather than sporadic or one-and-done training?
Does the user experience include motivational tactics to drive and sustain user engagement?

Thought leadership

Is the vendor active in the workplace learning community (besides sales and marketing)?
Has the vendor made a meaningful contribution to modern, right-fit training thought leadership?
Does the vendor reference respected thought leaders and solid research?
Does the vendor avoid using trendy terminology and unproven theories?

How real-life organizations are using microlearning within a modern training framework

Transformational organizations across many industries are reaping the benefits of right-fit training. Whether they’re solving onboarding, sales, product, compliance, or safety challenges, microlearning is a key strategy they use to give their frontline employees the right support at the right time to drive better performance and ultimately benefit the bottom line of the business.

Explore the real success stories of a few of these companies below.

Eyemart Express ditched their paper-based onboarding methods for a modern, quick, microlearning approach that cut their onboarding time from 35 days to 10 days—saving them thousands of dollars per employee in the process.

See Their Story

See how leading grocers–like Southeastern Grocers, Longo’s and Heinen’s–are using microlearning to ensure customers have consistently amazing experiences across every store.

Watch The Video

Discover how Merck reduced recordable incident rates and lost time injury frequency rates by using microlearning to increase knowledge of safety topics.

See Their Story

Tips for starting your modern learning transformation

Are you trying to solve specific, measurable business problems?
Do your frontline employees have limited time for training?
Do these employees often forget much of the information presented during training?
Are you looking for ways to respond more quickly to business changes?
Do you have problems getting frontline employees engaged in training programs?
Are you interested in using data to improve your training and business strategies?
Does your organization have compliance and regulatory training requirements?
Do you believe your employees deserve better support to do their jobs?
Do you believe the agility of your frontline is directly tied to your competitive advantage?

If you answer “yes” to five or more of the above questions, then it’s time to look at what microlearning within a modern training framework can do for your business. Here are a few suggestions on where to get started.

1. Get past the hype

As we explored earlier, there are a number of myths getting in the way of serious conversations around the true value of microlearning. These false assumptions have the unfortunate potential to limit the impact of microlearning. You can play an important role in helping your organization get past this hype and focus on the real meaning and value. Sharing this article with your peers and stakeholders is a great place to start when it comes to overcoming microlearning myths.

2. Leverage your partners

You don’t have to do this alone. Learn from the people who have already introduced effective microlearning with great results. Engage them in conversation. Find out how they overcame challenges to achieve success. Invite partners to share their stories with your teams and stakeholders so they can see just how powerful microlearning can be. Sometimes an outside voice can carry extra weight.

3. Get closer to your frontline employees’ realities

One of the big differentiators for microlearning as a foundational strategy is the opportunity to position learning and support closer to the employee’s day-to-day work. To do this correctly, you need a solid understanding of what this context looks like. Spend time on the frontline. Have conversations with your employees to understand the problems they face every day and how you can help them improve by applying microlearning along with the principles that make it most successful.

4. Find your business priorities

What keeps your CEO up at night? You should know this answer already. Even if you haven’t been assigned to solve this problem, you should understand how it impacts your organization and begin discussing how you could address it with training. An improved understanding of your business will be critical as you begin to introduce microlearning as the foundation of your modern training approach.

5. Start applying the basics

You likely can’t execute a full modern training strategy right away, but you can certainly start to apply some of the basic principles around what makes microlearning most successful in your current work. Fundamentals, like the idea of starting with a business goal and the science of learning, should be part of your current strategy and will set the stage for bigger improvements moving forward.

What is microlearning?

Your ultimate guide for unlocking measurable business value

Read this guide to understand:

A note on frontline mentions in this guide

Table of Contents

7 common microlearning myths

Microlearning definition