Ever heard of the forgetting curve?
It suggests that we forget 50% of what we learn within a day – and over 90% within a month if we don’t invest time in revisiting it. So, why does this matter?
We live in an age of information overload. Our attention spans, time (and money) are constantly in a tug of war between competing priorities in our personal lives and at work. We have more ideas and information thrown at us than ever, which amounts to a lot of mental noise.
In the workplace, compliance training can often be sidelined by both employees and employers in lieu of more pressing day-to-day priorities – which amounts to a huge business risk when left that way.
Enter microlearning
You might have already dabbled in apps like Nibble, Duolingo and Memrise outside work, which all offer (and deliver!) some variation of picking up new information in five to ten minutes or less, or splitting what might traditionally be a one-hour lesson into ten shorter chunks.
Microlearning also offers some unique benefits when it comes to compliance training. Why? Because regulations and legal requirements are constantly evolving, demanding quick updates and refreshers for employees on new obligations and policies throughout the year. Microlearning is a more nimble way to boost employee knowledge and skills without needing the resources to create a full-blown training course every time a change occurs.
There’s a huge amount of existing and emerging data around the benefits and potential of microlearning in the workplace. Here are just a few notable benefits:
Engagement and retention
It can feel like making sure your people complete the training is just one step of many. Expecting them to remember what they’ve been taught and prove that they can apply it? It poses a bigger challenge than a flag in an inbox.
Research microlearning and training retention across regulated industries shows promising results. One evaluation by Emerson and Berge, 2018, noted that employees who were trained using a “just-in-time” microlearning approach demonstrated significantly better information retention compared to those who only completed traditional 30 to 90-minute e-learning courses. The same study also concluded that a major benefit of microlearning is the ability to improve knowledge incrementally rather than throwing employees headfirst into everything at once.
This incremental approach is a major advantage in the compliance-conscious workplace, where individual knowledge of policies, regulations and requirements often varies – and you have to meet people where they are. The ability to supplement knowledge makes compliance training much easier to personalize.
Performance and productivity
Studies show a clear link between microlearning and improved employee performance.
For example, a study by Govender and Madden found that tech-savvy workers at a South African retail bank had better work performance and business metrics after a microlearning program compared to traditional training. Interestingly, their study recommended supplementing microlearning with knowledge sharing to reinforce the social aspects of learning.
This is an important area to highlight when it comes to compliance. For topics like whistleblowing and harassment, which rely on a shared cultural understanding, combining microlearning with other training formats help reinforce complex topics with more socially-integrated methods. These ensure sensitive issues are addressed collectively and contribute towards overall workplace culture, rather than just ensuring individual understanding.
Targeted learning
Microlearning allows you to address immediate knowledge gaps while avoiding information overload.
For example, if an employee asks about conflicts of interest regarding holiday gifting, imagine being able to offer a short, focused microlearning module specifically on gifting policies. This allows that person to immediately access relevant training to learn what they need to apply that knowledge in practice.
To take this a step further, a 2024 study in the International Journal of Training and Development noted that where many traditional forms of training fall short of situational, specific needs, microlearning has huge potential in a number of ways:
- As suggested above, it can offer targeted knowledge exactly when and where the learner needs it – and being able to immediately apply training concepts makes them much more likely to be remembered
- It falls under a technology-enhanced framework, meaning it’s more appealing and engaging to contemporary learners who always have mobile devices on hand
- Smaller modules are a better fit for modern, busy schedules and short attention spans
Adaptive and flexible
Microlearning is often faster and cheaper to produce on than many standard forms of training, which makes it easier to address training gaps in your compliance program quickly.
Smaller pieces of content also have the benefit of being easier to connect to your wider compliance program tools and program, filling the gaps where creating a whole separate course might not be viable. With the right software, it can also be segmented from your existing training, using what you already have to reinforce the training you’re already using to its best advantage.
What forms of microlearning content are out there?
Like how traditional training courses can span classroom to coursework, microlearning takes many forms. Unlike many pre-built training courses often cover the entirety of a topic, however, its short-form nature and variety of formats make it much more adaptable.
Here are a few of the most well-known forms:
- Interactive videos – Video offers a more dynamic and colorful way to learn about a specific skill or topic. These videos can usually be accessed on-demand, sped up or slowed down, and often come with subtitles, allowing employees to learn at their own pace and revisit content as needed. (We use focused video modules in our interactive, scenario-based ethics and compliance training!)
- Flashcards – While we might think of flashcards as something students might use at school, there are a whole host of digital flashcard apps for all manner of topics and courses available, with most of them accessible from any mobile device. These can be applied to a range of training topics, from testing technical terminology to checking familiarity with policies, internal tools or legal requirements.
- Mini courses – Shorter, digital forms of training distill broad topics into concentrated mini courses that concentrate on a particular skill or area of knowledge. These are most useful when placed directly in front of an employee when they first indicate interest or ask a question about a particular issue.
- Interactive quizzes and assessments – Mini assessments provide immediate feedback, reinforce learning and allow learners (and employers) to track progress. In a work context in particular, these types of interactive learning materials work well alongside varied training course content to make sure your people aren’t just reading the learning materials, but absorbing it, too.
Microlearning: A future cornerstone of compliance training
For ethics and compliance, microlearning has the potential to be most effective when used as part of a blended learning approach to respond directly to the questions your employees are asking.
Think about it: when we need an answer in our daily lives, most of us will hop into Google and check the first few results. We seek out quick, relevant information in the moment. Microlearning taps into this instinct by providing the knowledge your people need to know based on their behaviors or activities. Then, you can reinforce it by sandwiching it between other forms of learning, awareness materials and communication to make sure the importance of compliance really hits home.
The result? More instinctive learning and attitudes towards compliance – all leading to a culture of compliance with no lectures in sight.
Making ethics and compliance accessible and digestible for your workforce is a priority at NAVEX. To that end, we’re thrilled to announce a new feature available with NAVEX One Compliance Assistant – microlearning can now be enabled to deliver targeted, interactive training when Compliance Assistant users ask questions! So, not only is your workforce getting the answers they need quickly, they’re also getting the tools they need to internalize the information they’re seeking.
Sound amazing? We thought so, too! Learn more below.
