An effective onboarding process can be a very challenging task for organizations. Companies want to keep the good people they have hired. Thus, they must invest in the onboarding process so that the new hire remains productive and engaged throughout his/her tenure. This investment can be made in the form of an employee onboarding micro-learning program.
It is the process of using short modules rather than long ones to deliver information to learners. Instead of overburdening the new hire with lengthy data, microlearning divides the data into small bite sizes which make it easier to understand.
Research shows us that microlearning helps in increasing focus and long-term employee retention by 80%. It results in making the employee onboarding process become much better, quicker, smarter, and more engaging than ever.
Why Microlearning
Microlearning ensures that the employee onboarding process is conducted smoothly, efficiently and effectively. The information provided to the new hire on the first day can be bombarding for them. Using this powerful tool will ensure new hires can learn at their own pace and time.
New hires will be able to retain more information as they are being provided with custom-made content in the form of audio-visual format. With the shift to a hybrid working model, we can see many organizations utilizing microlearning techniques more often.
The best advice can be found in the article How to develop microlearning.
Following statistics from various research prove its importance:
- 58% of the employee would be more likely to spend their time learning at work if they are provided with content which is shorter in size.
- Microlearning is highly recommended by 95% of the e-learning trainers as they feel that students enjoy it more.
- Microlearning results in being 17% more effective when compared to traditional learning courses.
- Microlearning helps in improving employee engagement from about 15% to 90%
- According to e- learners 94% of them prefer microlearning on the job.
- 65% of the employee feels overwhelmed with the large amount of information provided in a traditional course.
- Micro learning is beneficial in increasing the development speed by 300% and decreasing the development cost by 50%.
How to Make the Best Use of Microlearning
Here are some ways to take the best use of employee onboarding microlearning program.
Use videos
Videos are a great source for making the onboarding content exciting. This will make the new hire understand the organization and its work floors, building, stakeholders as well as other employees in the organization.
Its visual stimulation will easily grab his attention and can be a source for allowing more efficient memory recall.
Use stimulations
An interesting way through which new hires can learn about their organization is through simulations. With the help of microlearning stimulation, organizations can let employees do a role play to make new hires understand more about their job.
Research has shown that stimulation has increased their learning curve and allows them to learn new skills and apply them to the real world.
Interactive PDF
The employee onboarding process contains a lot of textual material such as the employee handbook, organizational manual, other documents, forms, training booklets, and so on.
To make their onboarding more effective, organizations can develop interactive PDFs which can include various images, navigation, animations, and hyperlinks to make the reading more interesting. This will ensure the new hires do not get distracted and pay full attention.
Infographics
Infographic is a collection of data visualization such as bar graphs and pie charts. It has minimum text which makes it easy for the audience to understand.
They are simple to understand and can be customized. Using infographics in employee onboarding will make the new hire thoroughly engaged. He will have a better grasp of data in just a glance.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, it is time for organizations to think smart. The application of the above-mentioned micro-learning strategies will be highly useful in making the onboarding program successful.
It will benefit the new hire to pave their way and excel in developing their skills and knowledge as they enter the organization. It will further ensure that the new hire does not feel burdened with the never-ending data on his first day and will feel highly productive.
Now that you know more on employee onboarding microlearning program, check out some of our other related articles such as Onboarding checklist template and What is employee engagement.
