8 Business Use Cases for Microlearning

Are you excited to try out microlearning, but unsure when to use it? Below, we outline eight common workplace situations that benefit from a short-form course. Each situation includes a sample microlearning. At the end, learn how you can customize these templates for your own company and training needs. 

1. Create Organizational Alignment 

To hit a business target, everyone needs to be moving in the same direction. Creating that alignment starts with clear, frequent communication of the shared mission, vision, and values. Microlearning can help. The following editable template shows how you can align employees through regular executive “micro” updates:

• Executive Update

2. Highlight HR Information, Notices, or Reminders

Educating employees about annual events like open enrollment, tax season, and compliance training is a critical function of HR teams. The problem? Important announcements often get missed when they’re embedded in long paragraphs or endless emails. Grab the following templates to see how microlearning makes HR communications more digestible and engaging:

• A Quick Guide To Open Enrollment
• Internal Company Newsletter

3. Strengthen Company Culture and DEI Initiatives

Fostering an inclusive company culture is a continuous process—not a one-time effort. A series of microlearnings can support your larger culture-building and DEI efforts. Check out the following examples for ideas on how to get started:

• Are You an Ally? Try Taking on These 5 Roles 
• How To Identify and Stop Using Ableist Language
• Gossip-Proof Your Workplace

4. Streamline Business Processes

You can also use microlearning to document and streamline business processes or workflows—such as employee onboarding or performance management. Notice how the following examples make it easy for employees to work through the steps of a process independently:

• New Hire Pre-Hire Checklist
• Performance Review and Feedback

5. Increase Security Awareness

Most successful data breaches, phishing attacks, and other cybersecurity incidents are caused by human error. Adding refresher microlearnings throughout the year can fortify your defenses. See an example for safeguarding against phishing attacks below:

• Spot the Phish

6. Enhance Employee Wellness

A successful business needs thriving employees. But employee wellness training often ends up buried under competing priorities. Microlearning makes it easy for employees to fit in short breaks for self-care throughout the workday. Check out these two wellness-related microlearning examples:

• 3 Desk Stretches to Instantly Improve Your Day 
• 5 Tips for Better Naps

7. Provide Quick-Reference Guides

Microlearning is the perfect resource for one-off training questions: Employees can quickly find the answers they need—when they need them. Below, we’ve created templates for product and software training. But you could easily create quick-reference guides for sales, customer service, and other teams.

• Get To Know [Name of Product]
• Software Training

8. Reinforce and Assess Key Takeaways

Finally, who says you have to choose between a more sizable course and microlearning? Repetition aids retention. Consider following up longer training sessions with a microlearning quiz, scenario, or summary. The examples listed below demonstrate how you might do this:

• Can You Recover From a Workplace Mistake?
• Training Refresher

Wrap-Up

There’s no shortage of creative ways you can use microlearning to achieve your business training objectives. The examples above are just a starter list. You might also check out submissions to one of our weekly community challenges, 40+ Microlearning Examples Created in Rise 360 #407.

Interested in customizing one of these examples for your team? If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer, you can edit all of the examples linked throughout this post by choosing the course from our Rise 360 microlearning content templates. Here’s a short video showing how to do that:

What’s the latest microlearning course you’ve created? Tell us about it in the comments—and feel free to ask any questions you might have!

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