MDA Training

Tag: millenials

  • Adapting microlearning to suit older employees

    Adapting microlearning to suit older employees

    Over the past five years, the development of microlearning and subsequent implementation has increased dramatically.

    This dynamic method of teaching allows for the delivery and teaching of specific content or topics, in concentrated and specific bursts. Although many employers and workplace trainers understand that this is highly useful and applicable to the Millennial and Gen Z generations, it has been recognised that this delivery system may need to be adapted slightly, to ensure it is equally as well received by previous generations including, Baby Boomers and Gen X.

    Who are Baby Boomers and Gen X?

    The aptly named Baby Boomer generation is named as such due to the significant rise in births following the end of World War II and the return of troops serving overseas.

    The Baby Boomers are for being born in an era of multiple opportunities, dynamic culture, and lower expectations known as; the golden age. The successor of this generation, Gen X, is a cohort born between the 1960s and the 1980s, an era of economic growth and the pressures of accelerated culture.

    The subsequent Millennial generation is considered as possibly the most technologically savvy, with access to computers, games consoles and mobile phones for the majority of their lives, this generation is often distinguished as ‘digital natives’.

    For these reasons, it is understandable that the exposure to considerably different life events, as well as the arguably level of importance with regards to priorities, raises the assumption that the Baby Boomers and Gen X have a more reserved approach to technology.

    Digital adopters and microlearning

    Despite the growing number of Baby Boomers and Gen X currently active on digital and social platforms, these generations, more so Baby Boomers, are widely regarded as more likely to express a degree of technophobia, due to the lack of exposure to technology during the prime learning period of their lives.

    When we consider microlearning as a method of training, it seems less daunting and more easily digestible, which is particularly useful for digital adopters. For the younger generations, they may fly through these modules, however, Baby boomers and Gen X may find the delivery method less accommodating. In order to deal with these hurdles there a number of ways in adapting the ways in which we deliver microlearning modules to these generations.

    Working in groups

    These generations are often team players, collaborating together to achieve the result required utilising different strengths and abilities of the group.

    So applying this mentality to microlearning and developing an understanding of technology will put less pressure on individuals and allow them to work together to reach conclusions. This method also allows for discussion of the topic and to take more time to reach conclusions.

    Building confidence

    Confidence may be one of the key barriers for older generations when it comes to microlearning delivered across more complex platforms such as computers.

    Gradually building confidence in using these products for both personal and social use will develop a familiarity with the systems, which can then be applied to the microlearning.

    Sociologists claim that both the Baby Boomers and Gen X demographics are a collection of proud individuals, who typically choose not to disclose if they are struggling or admit to the desire of wanting to learn more.

    Based on these findings, it is logical that combining a social need and a practical preference would benefit the Baby Boomers and Gen X demographics. Workshops that integrate these needs could offer a microlearning scheme, reinforcing to the individual that they are not isolated when it comes to technological mastery.

    At the workshop, individuals will be taught step by step the different uses of technology, applications, and websites, while following the microlearning curriculum. Group training sessions are also more affordable, an additional incentive to learn computer skills.

    Offer choice

    With regards to Baby Boomers and Gen X, tactical schemes of microlearning should be introduced to ensure these generations aren’t left in a technology time warp.

    Research conducted by Breezie, a simplified tablet interface platform that manages schedules and interests for senior citizens, suggests that those who fall in the Baby Boomers and Gen X categories are more willing to learn new skills if they are in a community environment.

    Furthermore, Breezie found that older generations find touchscreen interfaces easier to familiarise with, rather than the traditional desktop. So if your microlearning practices are not flexible enough to incorporate simplified tablet or mobile options, it may be worth reconsidering the method of delivery.

    FOR BESPOKE TRAINING COURSES THAT IMPLEMENT MICROLEARNING TO SUPPORT BABY BOOMERS AND GEN X, CONTACT MDA TRAINING TODAY.

  • How to future-proof your business through microlearning

    How to future-proof your business through microlearning

    Microlearning refers to the learning method with the objective to deliver mini bursts of information.

    A typical microlearning activity could be viewing a flash card, memorising a word, listening to a short podcast, watching a brief video or answering a series of questions in a quiz.

    Compared to e-learning, which can be in the form of courses lasting several days, microlearning is based on short bites of learning with one or two learning objectives.

    Microlearning is focused on specific learning outcomes and can be used as a part of formal training. For example, it can be a perfect way to refresh knowledge or offer a rapid learning technique for those who need a reminder or information boost.

    Additionally, microlearning gives users the opportunity to learn without having to browse through numerous pages of content to understand a topic.

    What are the types of microlearning?

    There are numerous platforms in which learners can access microlearning materials. Blog posts are an easy way to provide a short burst of information and offer the easy ability to send a link to team members to read and digest at their own leisure

    Slideshows are useful for conveying short sections of information, using visual aids and offering a highly accessible medium that not only works across computers but also on phones and tablets while on the go.

    The quickly consumed sections combined with visual elements can assist learners to remember information more easily while incorporating videos with audio can diversify this learning method further.

    Videos equipped with closed caption transcripts are highly accessible for both visually and hearing impaired learners.

    Further microlearning activities include the creation of online games, which aims to make training more fun and get learners actively involved.

    The games can offer scenarios and multiple choice answer quizzes; each level can be associated with one lesson or skill that has to be learned.

    Plus, simulation can help to improve commercial awareness and offer the learner the opportunity to engage with scenarios, before experiencing them in live environments.

    Why should workplaces embrace technology for microlearning?

    The workforce is changing, mainly due to the arrival of Millennials in the workplace. Millennials typically prefer to use their own mobile devices for training, at their own pace, and they want relevant content targeted specifically to them.

    Employees want to be in control of their training by completing it in the way in which they are most comfortable, and by facilitating this, trainers are more likely to receive a more proactive reaction.

    Strategy changes and updates in corporate culture, induction or continued education can all be covered through microlearning, with online content much more easy to update in comparison to paper-based courses.

    To keep up with fast-paced changes occurring within a business, microlearning can be a great option for ensuring content is current and up to date.

    Furthermore, Millennial prefer content that spans just 5 to 6 seconds in length, according to a study by comScore. The study shows that long tiring content will lead to the learner quickly losing interest and motivation.

    Providing short learning bursts, which can be accessed on electrical devices in their own time, gives them the opportunity to learn at their pace and in a way most suitable to how they absorb information.

    Although the general consensus may be that Millennials attention span suggests a lack of want to learn, according to the Bersin by Deloitte Future of Corporate Learning report, training and development benefits are the most valued of all employee benefits.

    The study showed that 22% of millennials wanted further learning as an essential part of their work benefits package, while only 14% desired cash bonuses.

    Essential tips for successful microlearning programmes

    Microlearning is one of the most important trends in human resources today and will continue to grow in the future, so it’s important that it is executed successfully.

    Firstly, it’s important to understand the audience and how long you want to make the learning last and on what platform. You also need to identify a learning objective; this will help to create the content and assist the learner in understanding what the outcome should be from the course.

    Additionally, you should think about how you want the learners to interact with the microlearning materials, such as considering if it should it be interactive or is video enough?

    Another important point is to remember that microlearning needs to be short, so get straight to the point with the content and provide links to further information if the learner wants to conduct further reading for a deeper understanding.

    FOR MORE INFORMATION ON OUR SUCCESSFUL MICROLEARNING PROGRAMMES, CONTACT MDA TRAINING TODAY.

  • The 5 key benefits of commercial skills training

    The 5 key benefits of commercial skills training

    You may think ‘commercial skills training’ is just the latest buzzword amongst HR and training professionals, but in essence, commercial skills training is a fundamental part of ensuring your employees have the commercial acumen needed to benefit the key functions of the business.

    Commercial skills training provides each employee with insights into how the business makes money, the non-financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and also where the particular employee plays a part in organisational success.

    All commercial skills training is customised in terms of each person’s job role, skill set and any succession plans in place within the business, in order to create maximum impact.

    Commercial skills training is particularly relevant but not exclusive to the Millennial demographic. This group are set to make up over 75% of the average workforce by 2025, and good commercial skills are notably lacking generation wise.

    The questions to ask here are, will your business be ready? “Does every member of my organisation understand their role in the business?” and “Is every member of the workforce equipped with the commercial skills they need to be effective, and empowered, in their role?”

    Prioritising developing commercial skills early on allows the Millennial generation to familiarise themselves with the company’s missions and aims in a commercial context, early on – meaning when the time comes for them to take the ropes and make commercial decisions for the business, you have nothing to worry about. So, what are the 5 key benefits of commercial skills training?

    Empower your workforce and retain your staff

    Making your staff an integral part of the business can have great positive effects – giving staff training and ensuring they understand their value to you will see them stay, work hard and put the business first. Empowering your workforce with commercial skills and knowledge sharing is a great way to see a return on development.

    Drive change

    If you are looking to change the focus of your business, and get your teams to change their approach within it – commercial skills training can contribute to this process. With focused training, new ways of working can be instilled across an entire workforce and be used transformatively.

    Improve reporting

    How many employees truly understand the reporting you currently use in meetings, for weekly conference calls, daily team briefs or management meetings? If your workforce doesn’t truly grasp the figures, or KPIs being discussed, they will lack the confidence and insights to help drive performance.

    Gain financial awareness

    Commercial skills training explores each employee’s day-to-day activities in terms of how they impact the business financially, both positively and negatively.

    By adding this transparency, employees are able to understand the drivers of financial performance in the business and gain an understanding of how they personally can drive financial performance.

    Improve competitor awareness

    Commercial skills training focuses on competitor awareness and how this can be used to make sound commercial decisions. Understanding the marketplace means knowing your competition, who they are, what they do and why.

    An employee that understands the competition can positively impact business performance by adapting their activities or making suggestions about positive change and adaption.

    All elements of commercial skills training help to add value to your business, and your employees. Could your employees benefit from understanding all the elements that make up your business? We can help! Experiential training, fully immersed in your commercial context and management information will support your people with skills, knowledge and insights to better understand where they can add value and achieve organisational goals. 

    FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE COMMERCIAL SKILLS TRAINING PROGRAMMES WE PROVIDE, CONTACT MDA TODAY.

  • Talent management and tailored training solutions

    Talent management and tailored training solutions

    Many businesses put a high emphasis on attracting and recruiting talented individuals, but developing, managing and retaining them is of equal importance.

    Strategically managing the talent of your employees is invaluable to any business; contributing not only to staff retention, but also engagement and high workplace performance – adding subsequent value and return on investment.

    Identifying talent within your business

    In order to identify talented individuals within your business, ask yourself these questions:

    • Do they directly make a positive difference to the organisation?
    • Do they demonstrate the potential of moving on to higher levels of employment?

    It’s good practice to identify employees of high potential in order to begin work on their training, retention and development. A method more traditionally favoured by employers features a structured selection process in order to encourage employees to perform. This method can, however, be detrimental to employees not selected, particularly if sufficiently sensitive and practical feedback is not given – particularly among the Millennial generation.

    Talent management

    Talent management itself is the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention and deployment of individuals who are of particular value to an organisation, either in view of their high potential for the future or because they are fulfilling roles critical to the operation of the business.

    Tailored Training

    In the same way, you would desire a different skill set for different job roles, it is paramount that all training is specifically tailored towards your talent management strategy, ensuring you are nurturing the employees of the most value to your business.

    However, it is not just important to train those identified as having ‘high potential’. A lack of general training within the workplace is linked to low staff retention, so the key here is to identify the appropriate training in relation to each individual’s career path.

    Tailoring training by demographic

    Talent training programmes may include a range of activities, in a range of styles from formal training methods to more informal microlearning or mobile training methods. This relates directly to the job role and demographics of the individual in question.

    As identified in a variety of our other blogs, the working practices, and preferred training methods of different demographic groups is vast. Understanding how best to train each demographic group is paramount to conducting successful development and delivering a return on investment from each of your employees.

    The main difference between training Baby Boomers and training Millennials comes down to the fact Baby Boomers are happy to train as part of a team. They are the generation who work together to get things done, and as such, prefer group training methods.

    Millennials, however, known as the ‘me’ generation prefer to train individually as opposed to in groups in order to have their personal value recognised. As a generation, Millennials prefer training in the form of micro-learning as opposed to traditional formal training methods.

    This method also lends itself to be utilised for mobile learning. It’s easy to forget that Baby Boomers are also tech-savvy; thanks to the rise of the ‘silver surfer’ – 83% of Baby Boomers are now regular internet users, for this reason, a heavy technology focus within training is welcomed.

    FOR BESPOKE WORKPLACE TRAINING SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR TALENT MANAGEMENT PLAN, CONTACT MDA TODAY.

  • New year, new training programme! Why you need to invest in training heading into 2024

    New year, new training programme! Why you need to invest in training heading into 2024

    Gone are the days of ‘a job is for life’, yet it is as important as ever to implement good workplace training schemes.

    Whether your workforce is made up of millennials, baby boomers or other demographics – the emphasis and value a well-trained employee will bring to your company is invaluable.

    Now, more than ever – employees regard workplace training as vital to their career progression and the start of 2017 couldn’t be a better time to start reaping the rewards for your business.

    Want your staff to stay? Make training a priority

    There’s always the conundrum, ‘what if you train them and they leave?’, but ‘what if you don’t train them and they stay?’. Staff who are merely ‘getting by’ or stuck in their ways are not profitable or efficient assets for your business.

    Having a workforce who feel their career progression, skill set development and workload efficiency is a key priority to their employer are more likely to stay within a business and also pass on their new found knowledge and practices to other employees.

    Employers who are continually investing in employees via workplace training are also much more likely to see a positive correlation in terms of their business growth.

    The start of the year is the perfect time for a fresh start

    Just as those in the financial sector and related industries work to the financial year, many companies now structure their working year (including annual leave allowance and appraisal schemes) around the calendar year.

    This accounts for the inevitable extended periods of time away from work over Christmas, either as implemented by the employer, or taken out of the employee’s annual allowance – and allows for a fresh start after this period.

    Many workplace training systems are well received at this time of year, with employees being more open to new ways of working and improving ahead of the start of the new working year.

    Workplace training: start as you mean to go on

    If workplace training is relatively new to your business, starting as you mean to go on (and at the start of a new year) is a good way of getting your existing employees on board.

    Giving your employees the knowledge and skills to become more efficient and productive will see them feeling a higher level of job satisfaction, sense of worth to the company and a subsequent thirst to further develop these new skills.

    Similarly, introducing any new employees to workplace training schemes at the start of their employment with you helps to eradicate the risk of picking up bad habits from other team members and ensures a basic level of knowledge for their job role is met, in a way that compliments your business structure.

    Introducing new members to the company’s processes from the start will help to prevent any major differences in working practices further down the line.

    Workplace training sets your business apart from countless others

    No matter what industry your business falls into – there will always be those who train and encourage their staff to improve, and those that don’t. The ones that do, can welcome a wealth of business growth with high interest for job vacancies, plus happy and productive employees, who become advocates for the business itself.

    Make sure your business falls into that category and contact us today. Our variety of workplace training schemes and systems will help set your employees, and most importantly, your business apart from the rest.

    FOR BESPOKE WORKPLACE TRAINING PROGRAMMES THAT ARE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO SUIT THE NEEDS OF YOUR BUSINESS, CONTACT MDA TODAY.

  • Top tips for millennials training with baby boomers

    It’s not uncommon to find a mix of millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) and baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) working for the same business.

    Many boomers are company CEOs, CMOs or directors who have climbed the ladder and champion hard work, results and a well-developed sense of workplace professionalism.

    This doesn’t, however, exclude them from a requirement for training – so how then does this relate when baby boomers are confronted with the task of training alongside frank and tech-savvy and “entitled” millennials?  

    Remember that baby boomers are tech-savvy

    It’s all too easy to assume that millennials; raised in a world of computers, internet and social media will be entirely tech savvy and their baby boomer counterparts will be dragging behind.

    This often isn’t the case. The rise of the “silver surfer” means that as of 2016 83% of baby boomers are now regular internet users – not all that far behind the 97% of millennials; couple that with the fact 59% of boomers own a smartphone and 52% of them are on Facebook and it’s clear that you simply can’t assume all boomers are immune to modern technology.

    For this reason, it shouldn’t only be millennials training that has a heavy technology focus – just make sure you retain a human touch.

    There’s no “I” in team… is there?

    The word “team” means very different things to millennials and baby boomers. Boomers very much appreciate the notion of working as a team and see their colleagues as their teammates who all work together for a combined goal.

    Baby boomers, therefore, are going to be far more responsive to team training tasks and acknowledgement as a group for ideas, as well as praise for being able to work well with others. On the other hand, the “me” generation of millennials are more likely to be deterred by group praise as they may perceive that their personal achievements have not been recognised. For this reason, when training millennials with baby boomers it’s important to encompass a team effort with recognition of individual input and personal achievement.

    Not all donkeys follow carrots

    What might entice a millennial is often very different from what will entice a baby boomer. Millennials are far more likely to see themselves as “free agents” when it comes to employment – they are the work to live generation who prioritise work-life balance and therefore the offer of flexible training is going to be music to their ears.

    Baby boomers, however, who have grown up in a culture of visible hard work and rewards for such, are less likely to see a flexible training schedule as a particular perk and instead are enticed by the idea of growth, development and achieving goals.

    Offering different incentives to the different generations is far more likely to produce engagement and receptiveness to training from both groups, rather than forcing one to follow a carrot when all they really want is an apple.

    Getting the most from training millennials and boomers together isn’t always easy but it is achievable and extremely rewarding. Millennials training alongside baby boomers creates a great opportunity for both groups to absorb some of each other’s mentalities and knowledge.

    The key point here is to always remember that those born before 1964 are going to think differently to those born after 1980… but maybe they’re not quite as different as you think.

    FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE BESPOKE MILLENNIALS TRAINING PROGRAMMES WE PROVIDE, CONTACT MDA TODAY.

     

  • The benefits of microlearning in workplace training

    There are many different types of workplace training. However, the term microlearning is increasingly popular within corporate environments.

    Microlearning is an approach to skill based learning which delivers training in small bite-sized chunks. It allows trainers to deliver brief learning experiences designed to meet an extended learning goal over a timeframe built around the learner.

    What is microlearning?

    Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Generally, the term refers to micro-perspectives in the context of learning, education and training. The term is frequently used in the domain of e-learning as a more contemporary approach.

    Traditionally, e-learning modules were designed to be around 20-30 minutes in duration, whereas with microlearning the duration is closer to 3-4 minutes.

    Why is it useful?

    Microlearning is useful in quickly closing skill and knowledge gaps without overwhelming the learner, which can be a pitfall of some traditional training methods. “According to Microsoft, attention spans have fallen by an average of 33% to 8 seconds since 2000” so it is the ideal solution for today’s modern learners.

    Designed to deliver more immediate results; microlearning perfectly compliments the fast-paced culture of modern businesses. Learners are able to absorb information more effectively, then utilise this learning immediately for tasks in hand allowing for progress and achievements to be made quickly.

    Microlearning for Millenials and Gen Y

    Microlearning is particularly useful for millennials and Gen Y learners, typically an audience that finds it difficult to digest lots of information in one go.

    It can be delivered in a multitude of formats to suit individuals. E-Learning modules can be completed at any time and in any location on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, to suit a learner’s schedule. Classroom-based sessions can also be incorporated and enhanced through the utilisation of technology.

    FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE DIGITAL METHODS WE UTILISE IN OUR WORKPLACE TRAINING PROGRAMMES, CONTACT MDA TODAY.