The 8 Benefits of Microlearning that Matter Most in 2022 and Beyond

With hybrid work demands and the ongoing challenges of navigating life during a pandemic, employees have a lot on their plates. As such, their ability to dedicate hours on end to focus on learning is limited. Knowing that the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve suggests that learners will forget 90% of what they learned within a month without reinforcement, microlearning is a great way to provide a meaningful learning experience for your employees.

What is Microlearning?

Microlearning is the concept of breaking down learning into smaller, more digestible pieces to support retention. Knowing how short the average attention span is as well as how limited employees’ spare time can be, microlearning is an efficient way to promote learning within your organization that fits into your employees’ schedules. It enables content to be pushed out on a more consistent basis and builds a deeper investment in professional development and overall well-being.

In addition to being a solution to minimizing the forgetting curve, microlearning also allows for learning to be more engaging. With people bouncing between working from the office and home, microlearning allows people to learn at a time and place that works best for them. Being able to fit in a quick lesson ahead of a big meeting or during their downtime takes the pressure off your employees to figure out how to work around a large block of training in a day. For example, being able to learn more about leadership development in bite-sized chunks is easier for today’s workforce to implement versus trying to remember everything in an all-day training or having to delay their work to attend the session, adding additional hours to their day to catch up on what they’ve missed.

How will Microlearning benefit employees in 2022?

Now more than ever, employees are looking to be well-rounded and are eager for training that will help them get to the next level. With the rise of employees working from home or on hybrid schedules, microlearning and e-learning have become a critical component of employee development in 2021 and will continue to grow into the next year and beyond. Below, we highlight 8 benefits of microlearning in 2022 as well as how Blue Ocean Brain can support your teams.

1. Ability to develop fresh content that’s topical/relevant today. In addition to professional development, employees are looking for learning around topics such as mental health and emotional well-being, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Blue Ocean Brain’s content is created in-house by a team of experts, allowing us to deliver fresh new lessons every day. For example, our teams are continually developing lessons around current events, pop culture, and people who are changemakers and innovators.

2. The ability for hybrid/remote teams to access it easily and at any time. Microlearning allows employees to dive into topics through a variety of modalities that best fits their work environment. For example, Blue Ocean Brain can integrate into any learning ecosystem, including through SCORM lessons for an LMS/LXP, pushing out via IM apps such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, as well as through our UX, customizable to fit your employees and work culture.

3. Helps leaders grab bite-sized lessons and takeaways. Microlearning is a great way for employees to gain more knowledge on a specific topic and discuss it as a group. Leaders can assign their teams lessons to go through or pick one as a discussion starter, without having to spend hours going through training. This allows leaders to focus on key takeaways with their teams and allows them to pick specific lessons for individual team members based on their specific goals and areas for improvement.

4. Ability to aid onboarding. With many employees joining companies remotely, onboarding is a vital process to ensure they feel a part of the company culture (especially if they’ve never been to the office!). Microlearning can assist HR teams by allowing them to provide new hires with short, guided lessons about key topics important to the success of the company and the role. This can help ease the large information load that comes with starting a new job and gets employees started on the right foot.

5. Gamification provides learning incentives. An additional benefit of microlearning over traditional training is the ability to add a gamification element to the learning. For example, adding in brain games helps break up the lessons and is a nice change of pace during a busy day. Companies can also provide prizes to employees for those who answer the most questions correctly or are the most active, creating a fun competition to boost engagement and reward employees that are taking the time to truly engage with learning.

6. Bite-sized information. Understanding that learners on average only have 24 minutes each week to focus on learning, microlearning is designed to be bite-sized information that is much easier to absorb and fit into a busy day. Microlearning allows employees to focus on the content when and where it is easiest for them, ensuring that they are spending their learning time wisely.

7. Cost-effective and scalable. Because microlearning is shorter by design, it is less expensive to curate and develop than traditional training. It is also less time-consuming to maintain and administer, giving back hours to your HR and L&D teams to focus on other initiatives. This also allows companies to minimize spending on travel and fees for sending employees to outside training. The scalable nature of microlearning also allows all your employees to access the learning as opposed to a small pool being selected to attend a training or conference.

8. Learning at your own pace. Everyone processes learning differently and microlearning allows these differences to be supported more effectively than traditional training. Microlearning allows learners to engage at a pace that works for them and allows them to focus on the content they want to learn more about.

The benefits of microlearning are clear and elearning as an industry continues to grow, projecting to reach over $450 billion by 2026. As we enter 2022, learning and professional development will remain a priority for employees and organizations need to ensure that they are providing their teams with the most relevant and effective content to upskill their people and maintain a growth mindset within the company. With microlearning to support these efforts, the future of learning is bright for your organization.

Ready to see some microlearning in action? Check out these FREE bite-sized lessons that can give your people actionable tips for how to boost their mental health and well-being. See for yourself how Blue Ocean Brain microlearning helps guide learners on a journey of awareness to action around today's most important workplace topics.