Are you planning to go back to the office five days a week? Has your company shifted to a fully remote workplace? Or is leadership busy building a hybrid structure for employees? No matter what the future of your workplace looks like, our “new normal” is shifting once again. And it’s just as important, if not more, to get the transition right this time.

Watch this video to discover what leaders need to know about reboarding employees and how your organization can transition successfully.

2020 has brought many challenges to leaders around the globe. Over the past year, we’ve had to manage change and overcome resistance – the pandemic, political division, economic inequality, and social injustice.

As the year comes to an end, we’ve gathered the 3 most popular Fierce blogs to help you start the New Year off right:

#3. 3 POWERFUL WAYS TO BE MORE EFFICIENT WHEN WORKING FROM HOME

Aligning your work-from-home routine with your in-office standards is the key to success for virtual workplaces. As you continue to cultivate an efficient work-from-home routine, be sure to check out these tips for staying well-ordered. Read the blog

#2. HERE’S WHY DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES LEAD TO THE BEST IDEAS

Creating space for varying viewpoints to thrive opens up a world of possibility. Take a look at these different ways to put this into action in your workplace. Read the blog

#1. 3 EASY STEPS AS A LEADER TO CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO

As a leader, you’re always adjusting to meet the needs of your stakeholders. For continued success, you must constantly think about how you can adapt and change. Check out these key steps for shaking things up in the best way. Read the blog

“Our work, our relationships, and our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a company, a relationship, or a life, any single conversation can. Speak and listen as if this is the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It could be. Participate as if it matters. It does.”

― Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

There’s no doubt that teachable, measurable abilities such as technical and analytical skills are essential for success in the workplace. Companies are largely investing resources to develop employees who are ahead of the curve in the rapidly expanding digital landscape.

Simultaneously, with the expansion of artificial intelligence, we are seeing a shift in focus beyond technical know-how (“hard skills”). In turn, there is a demand for employees to possess “soft skills,” or, qualities including social and emotional intelligence, teamwork, leadership abilities, adaptability, and more.

Keeping in mind the increase of remote work and the future of virtual workplaces, the importance of a team equipped with soft skills is paramount.

Yet, organizations continue to focus more on hard skills training. In order to obtain the benefits of a balanced team, here are ideas and tips for improving your organization’s ability to leverage hard and soft skills. 

1. Embrace the distinction between soft and hard skills.

Hard and soft skills are viewed as having different values and ROIs. Training entails different levels of difficulties, and teaching methods may vary as well. We believe soft skills should be viewed as different so that employers can effectively accommodate those distinctions. 

2. Consider working harder at measuring ROI.

Most companies do a poor job of measuring training ROI, but those that do it well seem to reap the benefits. Try making the effort to calculate L&D ROI to see if it makes a difference in quality over time. Consider starting with a few programs and then eventually expand such calculations to other programs. Try to be rigorous but don’t allow perfectionism to bog you down. Gather whatever evidence is available to make an informed estimate. 

3. Measure management skills.

Most employees rate their managers’ communication skills rather poorly. The first step in correcting this is to gather data in your own organization on communication skills. Once such data is available, address the most pressing shortcomings through whatever methodologies are most effective. Once such training is complete, look for ways to measure effectiveness. 

4. Invest in soft skills.

While a majority of organizations report that soft skills are crucial, too often that is not backed up with much of an investment in soft skills training. Start by determining where there are soft skills gaps in your organization. One place to start may be management’s communication skills. Once gaps are identified, formulate an L&D response to close those gaps, then measure the success of an intervention. 

5. Take advantage of various training modalities.

It is notable how many different training modalities are seen as useful, and different modalities are useful for different things. Considering both internal and external L&D providers, offer training in various modalities and match those to the learner’s needs. Over time, invest most heavily in the ones that are successful.

In today’s competitive world, performance is everything. But how do you ensure that performance will continue to trend upwards with time?

Sure, you can hire the brightest minds with the slickest resumes to bring into your organization. But only focusing on hiring will only get you so far. Plus, it’s extremely costly. Instead, the most innovative companies are finding success placing more emphasis on their existing employees through leading-edge methods of employee learning.

Enter microlearning.

If you’re already thinking “boring training videos” and about to close this window, know that the eLearning world has undergone some major shifts in the past few years.

Those boring videos aren’t the norm anymore. And the new norm is exciting. With the rapid shift to remote work that we’ve seen this year, microlearning has emerged as one of the most effective ways to improve your teams’ learning and development program at scale and across many locations.

What to know about microlearning

So what is microlearning exactly? And why should you care about it? In short, microlearning is all about time. Long, exhaustive training methods are outdated for a reason. To get an entire organization into the same room for even an hour is just not feasible anymore. Plus, with everyone on the go and working across platforms, it just doesn’t make sense.

Microlearning solves this problem by distributing training via short bursts that can be fit in just before a lunch break or in the morning before diving into emails.

The great thing about integrating microlearning into your organization is that we’re all already doing it. Think of how you find the information you need to know, and when you need to know it. You look up the answer directly on a computer, laptop, or mobile device and then consume a very short article or video related to that specific content.

The professional microlearning concept is very much the same idea. And it works.

An article in ATD recently brought up George Miller’s theory that “most adult learners can store between five and nine items of information at once in their short-term memory.” Harvard Business Review further supports this idea of playing to our strengths, arguing that the microlearning approach makes learning part of everyday work instead of a once-yearly mandatory event that’s forgotten as soon as it’s over.

Learning that actually sticks with participants? That’s huge for employee and company growth.

Why microlearning is so effective

Microlearning is not just for the employee level either. It’s also shown to be incredibly effective for leadership development and a strong learning strategy. You can imagine why. If there is anyone struggling to find the time to sit through a long training session, its leaders doing their best to manage time in-between meetings.

And when it comes to securing your company’s future, leadership development is just as important as employee development. Effective management and communication are not skills we’re innately born with, but they’re critical to business success.

And while microlearning is not a new idea, the approach to distributing and growing this type of learning is. The performance numbers further support this claim that microlearning is the new way to learn and by extension, to work.

Forbes recently reported that “microlearning has been found to result in a 17% improvement in learners’ performance and a whopping 50% enhancement in learning engagement.” Those are numbers you simply can’t afford to ignore — and you shouldn’t.

More engaged learners are more likely to problem solve on their own instead of going straight to a manager with a question. And leaders with proper learning and development training are much more likely to approach issues with a full toolkit of solutions.

While it may not fully replace all other learning and development programs, microlearning is definitely worth putting into your consideration set.

Talking about politics, especially these days, can be very stressful and not to mention daunting. Add family and friends into the mix, and you may find yourself just avoiding the topic altogether. With these tips, you will not only be able to talk about challenging political topics with your loved ones, but you’ll also find yourself strengthening and maybe even healing those relationships for the better.

After you watch the video, if you’re curious to learn even more about how you can improve your conversations with friends and family, then download our free eBook, 5 Conversations You Need to Start Having Today.

The world of leadership development training has been in flux for some time now — even before the global coronavirus pandemic. More and more businesses are demanding scalable learning that can be implemented at lightning speed, is easily digestible, and most importantly, sticks. Microlearning is a powerful way to make that happen.

Here’s its definition: “…a method that uses small moments of learning to drive job performance and employee development…[It] is short and to the point, based on a topic or problem.” 

The brain can only take in so much information before it reaches overload. According to the Cognitive Load Theory proposed by John Sweller, people have a maximum capacity for learning at any one time. It’s like trying to fit two liters of water in a cup. At one point, the cup will overflow and no more water can be contained.

Some might propose getting a bigger cup, but the far better solution is to pour smaller amounts! That’s what microlearning offers. And that is what learners need. 

The Benefits of Microlearning

With everything from elementary school to corporate training now taking place online, our understanding and embracing of microlearning are critical. In truth, it’s always been critical, but in today’s reality, perhaps this is the opportunity to make it our chief focus and highest priority. If we can, if we will, our learners will thank us!

Recent research shows that microlearning improves training engagement by 50 percent, while also enhancing knowledge retention by more than 20 percent. In addition, studies have shown that this quick and easy learning modality means employees are spending up to 40 percent less time in training.

Above and beyond the reality of higher knowledge retention and better learning, is the HUGE benefit of convenience that bite-size learning provides! 

For me, even though I’m no longer in an office, I somehow feel busier than ever while remote working! I move from one Zoom meeting to the next, crank out emails in the in-between moments (or way too early in the morning), and if lucky, find time to grab some food (which usually just means more coffee)! 

The idea of sitting down for two hours of training, though luxurious, wouldn’t work for me right now – no matter how much I might enjoy it. But 15 minutes, or so? A quick “hit” of something that helps me do my job better? Not only is that doable, but I’d actually look forward to the respite, the encouragement, and time that’s just for me!

I’m hardly alone in this. Our world is moving faster and faster, despite the forced-slowing of COVID-19. Business leaders recognize just how precious people’s time actually is.

Providing employees the most potent benefit in the shortest amount of time is not only desired but practical, especially during this pandemic. 

Though often bundled into “soft-skills,” microlearning is anything but. It’s pithy and practical. It allows us to target training to address extremely specific and timely situations. Examples we have been working on at Fierce include how to have conversations about the coronavirus mask debate, diversity and inclusion, dealing with remote working, and SO much more. 

Bite-size learning allows us to provide what’s most needed in the moment and it doesn’t take more than a few moments to absorb! This is exactly why we’re incorporating this into our own training offerings. 

We are proud of our content, our training, our facilitators, and the way in which we create in-person (even virtual) experiences that are vibrant, robust, and memorable. When we made the decision to provide that same content with no facilitator or trainer at all – completely self-paced and self-led – we wondered about its efficacy, its “stickiness,” and its impact.

The Future of Bite-Size Learning

The result? We didn’t need to worry nearly as much as we did! Leaning on brain science and trusting our learners, we’ve watched microlearning work its magic. Nothing has been compromised and, in fact, much has been gained as we can now offer our content to countless more people with no instructor required to convey the message or cement the learning.

We then pushed the bite-size learning envelope even further with 3D Simulations – a new way to train using virtual, real-world short scenarios that can be completely customized to address any problem no matter how complicated. Seeing this as the future of microlearning, we asked ourselves, “Can we create short and highly interactive scenarios that allow users to experience both the pluses and the minuses of particular conversational choices?” 

More microlearning magic, to be sure! In under 15 minutes, learners are immersed in a familiar scene (their workplace, a storefront, the nurse’s station at a hospital) and given opportunity to practice the very conversations they either avoid or fear will fail – all with complete psychological safety, real-world visuals, immediate feedback, and amazing opportunity to learn through experience.

In a world pulled to disparate extremes, riddled with tension and conflict, and experiencing more distance between humans than ever before, we need training on how to have conversations that enrich relationships. 

We need training on how to have conversations that get results. We need training on how to not avoid the conversations that most need to take place. And we cannot wait until we’re all back together again or until things settle down. Microlearning is one way in which we can enable critical training now – without compromising content or quality. 

Those of us in the learning and development space are committed to helping people learn. It’s a worthy effort. How might our learners be better served if, in addition, we were committed to adapting to how we train? 

Instead of pouring way too much water in the cup, organizations can acknowledge capacity and utilize new, exciting training opportunities to offer just the right amount at just the right time and in just the right way.