What do today’s employees want after dealing with a disrupted world affecting how and where they work, how and where their children learn, and how they stay healthy? You may be surprised to find that in addition to flexibility and work/life balance, which has taken on a heightened importance, they want to learn! This is especially true among newer professionals in the workforce.
As SHRM reports, a 2021 Gallup survey conducted for Amazon revealed that “65 percent of workers ages 18-24 ranked learning new skills as the third-most important perk when evaluating new job opportunities.” In addition, the article cites: “Creating a personalized training program can help keep top workers satisfied.”
Employee needs vary, requiring options
It can be quite the task consistently providing employees with these learning opportunities. With up to five generations in the workplace today, their learning needs vary. Your younger employees will often require more workplace and soft skills basics, while seasoned workers who have been out of the education system for some time may need specific reskilling and upskilling around more modern workplace topics.
A changing environment is also driving the need for up-to-date training across a wide array of topics—from honing remote communication skills and managing a remote workforce, to self-care and inclusion and diversity education.
The work world is rapidly changing, meaning your employees need to be continually evolving as well—learning new skills, adapting to new technology, interacting with a wide range of people who, increasingly, may not be physically located near them.
Pandemic points to new needs
The pandemic has also pointed to new needs among employees—the need for resilience, adaptability, and the need to work effectively in hybrid and virtual team situations. Layered on top of these needs is the ongoing need for employees to contribute to a culture that values inclusion, diversity, and belonging.
To facilitate the training employees now require, employers are looking for ways to help them seamlessly get information, when and where they need it.
A one-size-fits-all approach to training didn’t work well pre-pandemic, and it certainly doesn’t work during or after.
Relevant, reliable information through microlearning
Today’s employees value work/life balance. The prospect of sitting in a training session—virtual or in real life (IRL) is neither appealing nor practical these days. A better way to connect and resonate with employees is through microlearning. Microlearning lets employees quickly and easily access the information they need to thrive in their jobs.
Microlearning offers variety and flexibility for employees, putting personal development into their hands. As Sarah Marshall writes in an article for Personnel Today, demand for microlearning is growing. It is, she says, “a model that uses a holistic attitude towards education, encouraging the flexibility needed for the age of hybrid working.”
In the past, Marshall says, employers have relied on a “push” learning model, “whereby employees listened to lectures in a boardroom or classroom then returned to work.” Microlearning allows employees to learn while at work—in some cases, literally while they’re working and needing information quickly to help them stay productive and make good decisions.
And these lessons best come from an expert in providing this type of education. Simply "chopping up" lessons and resources into bite-size pieces is ineffective and confusing for learners.
So how can you best provide microlearning to your employees? Blue Ocean Brain provides companies with custom learning journeys that fit their unique workforce needs and strategic goals. With an in-depth library of thousands of lessons and new ones published each day, our clients can access our bite-sized lessons and resources crafted with microlearning in mind. In this way, training campaigns can be quickly designed and dripped out to guide their people on a learning journey, while on-demand learning is at their fingertips in the library.
Needs in 2022
A recent Forbes article notes that power skills for 2022 will include both human skills and digital skills as employees continue to work in hybrid settings to a large degree. And research from LinkedIn’s 2021 Learning Report, lists “resilience and adaptability” as the top power skills. Do you have the training you need right now to address these hot topics?
Preparing your employees for success in 2022 requires providing them with both hard and soft skills training to help them navigate the new world of work. Add variety to your post-pandemic training catalog to ensure you’re meeting all of their—and your—needs.
