Employee Engagement, Microlearning

The Art of Content Writing revealed in 10 Tips

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, how do I write the most engaging content of them all?” If only there were such a thing as a spell for brilliant content writing, am I right? Well, sorry to disappoint you… But we have something even better up our sleeves! Simply use our magic acronym ‘MOBIETRAIN’ and you’re off to a great start! So how does it work, you ask? Let’s dig right in!

Written by Jennifer Dekker

‘M’ = Make a planning

A good start is half the work. So, first things first! Before you start writing anything, it’s a good idea to make an overview, meaning: define your structure, set your goals and decide on the key take-aways for the track and each learning moment. Hold on to your structure and the content writing will flow naturally!

‘O’ = Out of the box

Thinking outside the box is your train of thought while writing! Don’t just share theory but try a different approach. Empower your team with knowledge in a unique way by introducing scenarios, fun facts and practical examples out of their day-to-day working lives. Or what about showing an explanatory video, instead of writing everything down? You can simply record one on your mobile phone yourself!

‘B’ = Bite-sized

This one is pretty straight forward: don’t try to write a book. Keep it short, sweet and simple! Present bite-sized pieces of information and focus on the key need-to-knows, instead of nice-to-knows – those can always be included in the ‘tips & tricks’. The shorter the better, because your audience sees the learning content on their mobile phone, remember? So, keep that in mind while writing!

‘I’ = Images stick

Images stick, it’s as simple as that! Sometimes strong visuals speak louder than a thousand words. It’s also a great way to spice things up and keep your audience engaged! Truly a win-win situation, right? You can use real pictures, insert an animation or infographic, and don’t forget to add a few GIFS here and there – they can be funny, inspirational or supportive! 

‘E’ = Engaging 

We already dropped the E-word a few times. So, it must be an important one – we hear you think. That’s right! Content writing is all about making your content fun and engaging. How, you ask? Well, let’s go over a few simple tips:

  • By playing with the flow within your learning moment. You can start by sharing information, followed by asking some questions, but it’s also fun to mix it up now and then!
  • By alternating between the various question formats (yes/no, swipe, ranking, multiple (image) choice, multiple (image) answer, true/fact).
  • By adding images and using the text editor (to highlight certain words, use bullet points, etc.) when you’re creating text slides.

‘T’ = Tone of voice

It goes without saying that you should always keep your audience in mind while writing. You must adapt your tone of voice to the learner. The easiest way to do so is by putting yourself in their position and speaking their language. Consider if your writing style should be formal or informal, adjust the difficulty level, and maybe think of a fitting way to address your end-users, like: “Hi, champs!” or “Hello, heroes! “ 

‘R’ = Retention

In order to truly learn, a user needs to see the provided information multiple times. So, simply sharing information isn’t enough to make newly acquired knowledge stick. Make sure your team remembers what they’ve just learned by asking them a variety of questions about it. Dare to challenge them! To stimulate this knowledge retention even more, various tests are built-in as well.

‘A’ = Audience

We’ve already addressed the importance of keeping your audience in mind while writing. And the reason for that is twofold, actually. Besides adapting your tone of voice to the user, you should also alter the information you share with them. It must be relevant! Maybe a learning track is only meant for a part of the team? Then create user groups! Or maybe the track is useful for everyone, but just needs some changes here and there? Well, with our clone functionality you can easily tweak tracks for different user groups. You’re welcome!

‘I’ = Intrinsic Motivation

Make the learner’s motivation come from within! Of course, our gamification elements can help you with that but keep this in mind while writing as well. People love to complete things, so use that to your advantage! Don’t make a learning track too long and guide your users through it. Start each learning moment by sharing what they may expect to learn and finish it by encouraging them to go on and start the next one! 

‘N’ = New approach

Mobile microlearning is a relatively new way of learning. You have the chance to empower your team with knowledge in an innovative way by using different types of questions, adding original ‘tips & tricks’ and, of course, by relying on the implemented gamification aspect. But because it’s all so new, it’s indispensable that it’s being supported throughout the entire organisation. If you truly want to make an impact, it’s important to include every layer of your company in this new learning experience! So, our final tip to you: don’t forget to entice your users with a grand introduction and remember to keep triggering and supporting them along the way. Good luck!

Now that you know a thing or two about content writing, it’s time to pick up your pen! Would you like some more guidance?
We’ve got your back! Simply contact us at hello@mobietrain.com.  

Welcome at the office
Employee Engagement

Welcome, come on in! – 5 essential tips for onboarding your employees

No matter what sector you are in, the main obstacles to successful onboarding are the same. New employees are looking for guidance, their place within the team, and the essential knowledge for getting started. If your industry has a high employee turnover, then you know how important it is to get this process right.

It’s a little disturbing, that according to famed analytics firm Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organisation does a good job of onboarding. That’s a lot of room for improvement! Here are our 5 essential tips to get your employees onboarded from day 1.

1 – Early training is the same for everyone – make it personal

To engage staff from the very beginning, and increase your chances of retaining them in the long term, You need to make your training personal from the start. In addition to a warm welcome and a team session, set them up on a mobile-first platform like MobieTrain straight away. It can help them to feel part of the organisation and allow them to start absorbing info between sessions and on-the-go. Furthermore, you can begin gathering data that will help you tailor their training over time.

2 – Onboarding is too short – make it ongoing

Remember that onboarding is ongoing: absorbing company values takes time and performing well requires practice. Vary your types of training by creating a blended learning strategy to maximise effectiveness: a face-to-face session where everyone meets, a crash course on MobieTrain to cover the essentials, a long-term learning path to develop an individual’s specific skills and strengths over time. HR experts say that giving newcomers a clear development path early on increases the chances of them staying on.

3 – Imparting too much info at once is useless – make it bite-sized

If you overload newbies with info on day 1, don’t be surprised if they have forgotten most of it by day 2. Our brains are not outfitted to take in huge amounts of information at once. Bite-sized pieces that can be built up over time and chunked together is much is much easier for our brains to handle. Your tech solution can be really helpful here. If you can space repetition of info out over time, at intervals that fit a learner’s individual pace, you can increase knowledge retention by up to 50%. That’s exactly what microlearning does.

4 – Onboarding is too generic – make it interesting

Regularly adding new training content keeps it fresh and allows employees to stay both up to speed and engaged. Tailor it to your company, so it reflects your culture, your values and even your colour scheme. MobieTrain allows you to do exactly that and do it up to 50% faster than normal e-learnings. You can also add gamified elements like quizzes, puzzles, videos and rewards to keep content fun and shareable amongst staff, motivating them to come back for more. Combine this with interactive in-person sessions that allow newbies to actively experience the company culture.

5 – Tech solutions are often overlooked – make sure it’s working

Mediocre onboarding can lose you talent and cost you money. Which is why you need to ask your teams for their input and keep managers involved throughout the whole process. Use your data insights to look back at staff adoption of materials. Monitor their progress over time and look forward at periodical reviews, setting actionable learning goals together.

Want to know more about using MobieTrain to improve onboarding in a fun and interactive way? Just ask!

Change resistance
Employee Engagement

Resistance to Change in Organisations is not inevitable, but how to avoid it?

It’s widely accepted that when it comes to accepting change we humans aren’t keen. We’re creatures of habit. Our survival instincts demand that the degree of insecurity in our lives is limited and manageable. Reducing feelings of insecurity and threat during organisational shifts should then be a key concern for change managers.

The main barriers to change

Psychology suggests that the reasons for resistance to change within organisations can be many and varied. The three most common types you will encounter are likely to be:

  1. It feels risky: jobs may be going, new ones are unfamiliar. Attachment and denial can be factors for individuals. If a whole group feels at risk you may encounter a swell of cultural resistance.
  2. Information overload:there is simply too much to process, and so little time allowed for doing that in.
  3. Misunderstanding resulting from a lack of, or poor communication with employees.

If you can identify the various forms of resistance, and the underlying causes for it, you can target it and reduce it much more effectively.

And, what can you do to reduce resistance to change?

A 2020 survey of over 16,000 employees by Deloitte found that employee recognition was vital for engaging staff in anything. Though three quarters of those surveyed said a little recognition, a thank-you, a chat, made them feel engaged, only a third of respondents felt that they received that attention. So first off:

  • DON’T – just ‘announce’, engage

You risk provoking very negative emotional reactions in staff if you merely ‘announce changes’; both self-worth and security are tied up in our attitudes to our work.

  • DO – Talk

Make time to communicate changes well, empathise with the various affects these will have on each member of staff, talk to them, monitor progress and check-in often.

  • DON’T use just one ‘training’ session

This is just announcing, disguised as engagement. A good manager acknowledges that adaptation to anything is a process.

  • DO – employ continuous learning practices

Invoke curiosity about new opportunities and develop a good blended learning strategy to make uptake of new knowledge easier and more effective. Creating a culture of continuous learning will encourage acceptance of change by reducing fear of it.

How can digital learning help?

Levels of resistance will vary between staff members, depending on factors like age, time employed, skills level etc.. As the Deloitte survey shows being available to staff, intense though that can be, is vital. Using a digital learning platform like MobieTrain can help you to:

  • Keep it personal: you can increase engagement and aid individual adaptation by creating a personal learning path for each employee.
  • Monitor: then use the data dashboard to glean insights to discuss with them and together set new achievable goals.
  • Reduce fear of change: most importantly our tools help you make any training more fun and enjoyable! Use games, quizzes and microlearning to maintain engagement. Engagement increases acceptance and acceptance reduces fear and insecurity.

Want to try digital learning as part of your change management strategy. Give us a call to discuss!

Change models
Employee Engagement, L&D Approach

Change Models: many and varied, which one will suit you?

Change is happening all the time… whether we like it or not. An efficient change model gives you an essential guideline as you try to steer the transformation of your business, a guide you can adapt and tailor as you build the strategy for your next steps.

We’ve chatted about the Adkar model before, plus how and why it might be a good touchstone as you start building your MobieTrain content. But there is of course no ‘one size fits all’ theory. So, we listed three innovative change models to help you with your hussle to become a real changemaker:

McKinsey 7s model

Taking a different tack, two ‘70’s ex-McKinsey execs came up with a way to examine different elements of your organisation and how they interact. This is a popular approach early on in the change management process if you are reviewing whether changes are due and, if so, what those should be. It can be just as useful for teams, or to update your processes, as for organisation-wide changes.

McKinsey puts shared company values, the ones that (should!) underpin everything you do, front and centre in their model. For optimum company performance the McKinsey 7s emphasises that you should strive to have all 7 elements in balance.

Kotter’s Change Model

‘90’s Harvard professor John Kotter introduced his 8 point change model after conducting research with 100 companies undergoing serious shakeups. It gives more depth at each stage of a sequential change process and so may be suitable if you want clear suggestions of activities that are helpful at each point along the way. Kotter’s model breaks down like this:

  • Increase urgency
  • Build a Guiding Team
  • Develop the vision
  • Communicate for buy-in
  • Empower action
  • Create short-term wins
  • Don’t let up
  • Make change stick

Where the Adkar model assumes company leaders have already built their strategy, the first 3 steps of Kotter’s are aimed at those leaders who are yet to start that strategic process. The other parts of Adkar are then broken down into detailed steps as the process continues. As a more top-down model Kotter might be less suitable for horizontally structured startups, scaleups and SME’s.

Lewin’s Change Model

Lewin specialised in social, organisational and applied psychology. His change model as applied to organisational and change management codifies the same essential concepts as Adkar, but simplifies those into 3 generally applicable steps:

Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze

The defrosting part, entails noticing and accepting change needs to happen in the business, letting your hard and fast ideas about it melt so that you can pull it apart and examine where elements of your practice may need altering. Changing those elements is step two. Then refreezing solidifies the new behaviour as your new benchmark. If you want something straightforward and easy to understand this could be it.

Does one of the change models we’ve highlighted grab your attention? Set up a sparring session with one of our experts to discuss if it’s a good model for you!

Change Adkar model
Employee Engagement

Adkar Change Model: what is it and how can it help you?

You’re looking to make a change? And you want to ensure that your employees are ready and willing to make that jump with you? Don’t know the Adkar model? Then read on. It’s a surefire way to help you lower resistance to change and speed up implementation and acceptance of it.

What is Adkar?

Created in 1994 by Jeff Hiatt, founder of Prosci, the Adkar model was devised to help employees process and engage with change. It does this by providing managers with a roadmap for bringing strategic changes to the workfloor, while aiding them in recognising employees’ needs and level of engagement as they do so.

The Adkar model of change is totally employee-focused, so it’s particularly well suited for incremental change, that can be iterated on and brought in over several adkar cycles. Used effectively it should help company leaders discuss the various stages of implementing change, and employees to understand and commit to the actions needed for those changes to work.

It’s based on the following acronym:

  • A – awareness, of the need to change on an individual level, as part of an organisation.
  • D – desire, to change (become supportive of and actively engaged in affecting change)
  • K – knowledge, of what needs changing and how to do it
  • A – ability, to learn and practice the skills and behaviours needed 
  • R – reinforcement, the practice needed to maintain the changes and stop staff falling back into old habits.

How does it work?

First tackle the what – once the strategic decisions have been made, make sure that your internal communication is clear and no one has been left out of the loop. This is the Awareness part: don’t pull any surprises on staff which might make them defensive. Flagging imminent changes and posting updates on your intranet or MobieTrain news feed, might be a good place to start.

The why? Next instil a sense of desire in staff by making sure that they understand the changes, their part in them, and why these are useful/essential to both themselves and the company. You might do this via a team training or by using your digital training platform to introduce the subject. Make it fun and enjoyable, perhaps using a video, followed by a game or quiz; all options in MobieTrain’s content creation area.

And the how? By equipping employees with the right tools, training and knowledge (Ability), and by acknowledging that change takes time (Reinforcement), managers can help employees make the switch.

By creating individual learning paths, different employees can train at their own pace. Plus, as MobieTrain is a mobile-first platform, they can do that whenever and wherever they want. Our data dashboard gives you actionable insights into each team members’ progress. So, Adkar analysis can easily be included in your MobieTrain content as you create it.

How can Adkar help you?

When used well the Adkar change methodology can increase employee engagement and knowledge retention helping you make organisational changes more quickly, effectively and enjoyably than you, or your staff, could have anticipated.

Do you want to chat over just how that might work? Give us a call!

Continuous learning
Employee Engagement

How to create a Continuous Learning culture

Why is continuous learning important for you?

Organisational development experts suggest that business failures often result from dysfunctional teams. And why do they not work well? There may be insufficient structure or support. Sometimes learning is inadequate or undervalued, training is out of date, or reward systems don’t work. As the digital world speeds up and grows, more complex corporations often find themselves struggling to adapt their training, the essential way to make sure they remain responsive, healthy and enjoyable places to work.

Companies which are successfully implementing a culture of continuous learning are not just finding they are more versatile and adaptable, but that their staff are less stressed and more engaged. But how to start it and keep it?

How to create a continuous learning environment

First off, create a blueprint of what your employees need:

  • What knowledge do they need to have?
  • How can you encourage active engagement in learning?
  • How can you build professional development routes that would be beneficial to individual team members, and the group as a whole?
  • How can you make sure learning is valued and remains central to your company culture?
  • How can you make sure your approach is working?

A blended learning strategy can help you integrate different learning cues in one integral concept, adapted to your company needs. As you build your blended learning strategy you will become aware of both the strengths and barriers when it comes to learning within your organisation.If you make sure your digital learning platform has a comprehensive data dashboard, you can gather concrete insights to make sure your training continues to evolve. With an integrated platform you can make data-driven decisions to serve your employees with relevant content.

Engagement

Whatever plan you decide to map out: The execution has to be great. People bore easily. It’s therefore essential to make sure that you keep training materials fresh, innovative, engaging and easy to update.

The digital platform you choose to work with is key in implementing an efficient blended learning approach.. For instance, MobieTrain allows you to create your own branded learning content, develop and add new modules lightning quick (50% quicker than traditional e-learnings), and reach staff outside of ordinary training times thanks to our mobile-first approach. Adding gamified options like videos, quizzes, and digital rewards will also mean that your training app is actually fun! And able to contend with the best mobile-gaming around. Your own learning and that of your staff will be ongoing and on-the-go.

Encourage curiosity

Our brains are constantly absorbing and reshaping information. Putting a growth mindset at the heart of your learning & development culture and actively working against fixed mindsets will reduce fear of failure and improve enthusiasm for learning. In doing so seek to create an equitable and safe atmosphere for training, one that values practice, process, individual and group effort. When learners are relaxed and enjoying training, learning outcomes improve.

In these ways continual learning can help improve emotional well-being among staff. Which makes for a more pleasant workplace as a whole. One with reduced stress, better emotion management, improved working relationships, better staff retention and more appeal for potential employees. And, of course, all these factors have financial benefits for the organisation too.

Ready to start your continual learning culture?

If you’re looking to create a future-focused climate of continual learning for your business, get in touch. We’d be delighted to help you streamline out your plans.

Blended learning
Employee Engagement, L&D Approach, News

The Future of Work is now: are you prepared?

We can’t avoid it anymore. After talking about ‘the future of work’ for the past couple of years, it is finally here. Forced upon is in an unprecedented way, with a speed that none of us could have predicted.

But how ready are you and your employees for the ‘new normal’?

The situation worldwide is changing daily. None of us can really be sure of what the ‘new normal’ will look like yet. But there are a few things that we’ve been made certain of, especially when we consider training and engaging our increasingly remote workforce.

Traditional training and comms is no longer enough

  1. The need for speed: we can no longer afford 3-4 month content creation cycles. We need to get relevant information to our employees instantly, and at scale, especially when this information and regulations are continually changing.
  2. Reducing time away from our roles: face-2-face training and e-learning takes a lot of time to consume and takes our employees away from their roles. We need to streamline training so that it aligns with our busy days and can be digested “on-the-go” in short, effective bursts.
  3. We need to retain this knowledge: When training is concerned with important topics such as the health and welfare of our employees and customers, we need to make sure the knowledge sticks. 80% of the knowledge from traditional training is forgotten after 30 days. Our brains are simply not wired to focus for such a long time and retain so much information at once.
  4. Communicating with remote workforce: we need to reach our remote, sometimes multi-national, workforce quickly and consistently.
  5. It needs to be cost effective: In-person training and e-learning requires dedicated infrastructure, such as classrooms or desktops/laptops. Almost all employees have smartphones, but what about laptops? We often need to rent and maintain this equipment for our employees, which can come at high costs.
  6. Lack of engagement & difficult software: Creating simple, engaging training that can be followed by all employees, with different roles and backgrounds, can be a real challenge with traditional tools. Often those traditional tools are complex, targeted at HQ employees and desktop-focused

So what can we do?

The good news is that our current climate is encouraging us to foster innovation. With regulations changing daily, we have to accept that what may have worked pre-pandemic may no longer work. The future of work is now, and we need to find solutions that match.

One such solution is the inclusion of mobile microlearning, a trend that has been evolving rapidly prior to the pandemic, and is gathering even more relevance now.

By adding mobile microlearning into the mix, we can consume content remotely, intuitively and on demand. We transform the long classroom and e-learning training into bite-sized pieces of content that we can actually remember. We add gamification so that your employees are self-motivated to engage and learn.

If we do this the right way, we can see adoption rates increase to over 90%, engagement numbers which are 4x higher than traditional e-learning, and 50% higher retention rates.

The power of blended learning

But we don’t have to start again from scratch. Traditional training still has benefits, but these benefits are amplified by a blended learning approach that combines existing training with microlearning.

How can we do this?

  • As a standalone learning method for specific topics and user groups that are suited for this, especially non-desk employees who can only be reached on their mobiles.
  • Before in person training or e-learning, or while preparing those in order to make the traditional training more efficient, for example by identifying specific knowledge gaps. This way, we can optimise in person training or e-learning by length or volume.
  • After in-person training or e-learning. Continuous reinforcement significantly increases knowledge retention, and avoids the new information being forgotten soon after lessons.

Mobile microlearning can be adapted to tackle different challenges for different companies, depending on the industry, topic and target audience. Whether used as a standalone solution, or combined with existing programmes in a blended learning approach, we can use this technology to move quickly and ensure our employees are ready for the future of work.

companies love microlearning
Employee Engagement, Microlearning

Discover why companies love microlearning

Looking for the best, most effective and efficient way to train your employees?

Excellent! Do keep reading!

Go Micro or go home 

Every successful company strives towards continuous improvement and positive change, right? Yet finding new ways to be creative and boost sales isn’t always as easy as it sounds. In the end it’s your team, your employees: the core of your company, who come up with the great ideas, new approaches and creative suggestions. In other words: to be successful you need them, and they need you to invest in their knowledge!

“Yes of course I want to give them the knowledge they need, yet there is simply no time or a huge budget to do so, is there? And even if I have figured that out, how do I involve people who just started working here and keep them motivated?”

We’ve got you!

What you are looking for is essentially microlearning:

Microlearning is bite-sized training content, offering just the right amount of knowledge to help a learner achieve a specific, actionable objective. In MobieTrain’s case, employees are provided with 5 minutes of mobile-training daily. Not only does this improve engagement and avoid knowledge overload, it is also proven to improve knowledge retention.

The best way to apply microlearning: Mobile is the new black 

Through delivering microlearning on mobile you support employees in training anywhere at anytime and you’re able to overcome the challenge of reaching a remote and diverse workforce.  Most importantly, you can tackle the challenge of time. Your employees no longer need to take time away from their roles to learn, and are able to seamlessly fit training into their daily workflow.


Variety is the spice of life

What we learn with pleasure, we never forget

Our mission is to apply microlearning in a digital, user-friendly and inventive way throughout our application. Because it’s a tool made for and by retailers, we can even better accommodate today’s workforce and needs.

Don’t forget me

German psychologist Hermann Ebinghaus’ famous ‘forgetting curve’ concept explains why 80% of traditional training is forgotten after 30 days. Microlearning has been designed around 3 proven neuroscience techniques to combat this and boost long-term memory: 

  • Spaced Repetition. Practicing new topics repeatedly over a set amount of time. 
  • Retrieval Practice. Forcing the brain to recall information with strategic questions. 
  • Employee Assessment. Tracking an employee’s increased confidence in each new topic. 

Ready, set, go! 

Gamification is another important way to keep employees engaged and motivated. Badges, awards, gamified elements and quizzes are great examples of how to trigger users to complete their training. Team this up with your own brand incentives and real-life experiences, based on the data that the dashboard will provide. 

One of the ways to do this is to keep content varied and interesting. Videos, rich multimedia, quizzes, polls, infographics and a variety of question formats are just some of the ways to accomplish that.

Let’s get personal

However, it is equally, if not more important to inspire employees to be intrinsically motivated to drive their own career development. This opposed to extrinsic motivation with rewards and leaderboards. This can be achieved through personalisation and individual learning paths where employees can easily see and track their own progress.

Trust your own instinct

Besides the fact that your learning path can be personalised, it’s also intuitive and user-friendly. The whole track is designed to keep the learning process fun and easy, without having to search for hours where to find your track, how to log in, where to get started, etc. 

In the end, it’s about finding the best tool for your employees while embracing the future and keeping the constant changes in mind. Microlearning is the future, so why not be part of it?

“Learning is an experience. Everything else is just information.” – Albert Einstein 

retail mobilelearning perfect marriage
Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, Microlearning

Why m-learning and retail are the perfect marriage

Retail has changed. The fast tempo at which new collections are churned out, makes for a never-ending stream of new items, information and customers entering your store. Just 2 collections a year is no longer the standard. Retailers like Zara can turn out up to 104 (!) micro-seasons. That’s fast fashion for you.

Retail sales training however, has not really evolved with its counterpart. In most cases, it has remained a classroom training with some coaching on the job if the newbie is lucky.
The constant influx of new information for your staff on the floor, as well as the level of customer service you want to provide to your customers, makes you rethink this.

You’ve probably heard your employees talking about these trainings; they’ll be sitting in a classroom training for 2 days. Asking themselves who all these people are, hoping for tasty sandwiches during lunch (they never are) and most of all, wondering if they’ll still remember all this information next week.

We can see a couple pitfalls coming back when it comes to retail sales training:

  1. The training does not take the deskless workforce into account.
    It gives out information in bundles of paper ‘to look over at home’. Or it expects people to sit behind a computer at the back of house for hours, doing e-learnings.
  2. The training is not personalized to the specific employee and their role.
    A new employee needs a completely different approach than some of your more seasoned sales associates. One size fits all, is rarely applicable in fashion, why try it with training?
  3. The training is very intensive for a day… until it’s finished.
    Usually the classroom trainings are quite in-depth. There’s a trainer on hand for questions and the entire time, they’re emerged in knowledge and information about the brand, its history, its commitments… And then, just like that, it’s done.
    They get no follow ups on how they’re applying it in-store and can’t ask questions. (Like a Tinder-date, it disappears after 3 days, never to be heard from again.)
  4. The training does not evolve with the employee.
    Imagine having to do the same training every year and not having the option to tell your manager what you’d like to learn or which skill you’d like to hone. Contrary to popular belief, sales associates do want to learn and develop themselves.

Do not worry, we did not list up all these troubles just to have you realize the shortcomings your training is dealing with. Because there is a perfect solution for all of these pitfalls discussed above.

Mobile learning + Microlearning = Best of both worlds

Mobile learning and more specifically, microlearning are no new phenomena. It has become more and more obvious these are excellent solutions to many of the problems that come along with a stuffy classroom training.
The combination of both micro and mobile, plus offering training in small increments whenever the employee feels like it, is the fundament of mobile microlearning.
It just might be the best of both worlds.

Allow me, to tell you why.

 

Mobile microlearning is an ‘Anytime & Anywhere’-formula of learning

People take their mobile device everywhere these days. Your employees are not confined to desks for this mobile training and can choose for themselves, when and where to start the training.
Mobile microlearning makes this even more convenient by offering the information in bite-sized learning moments. This way it is even more inviting to start AND finish a new training.

The retail sales training can be as up-to-date as you want it to be

You can implement relevant viral videos in the training, and tailor the learning experience to the employee’s need and lifestyle.
This is especially relevant in retail, as you want everyone to stay up-to-date on their product knowledge and give the customers the best experience and service as possible.
For example: When the launch of a new shoe comes around the corner, it is so much more convenient to communicate all of the features and benefits of the new item through your mobile microlearning platform.

With the mobile microlearning option, you can bring all necessary information to your employees in a fun and engaging way on the moment they need it!

Mobile microlearning makes retaining information easier

By doing little pieces of the sales training over a longer period of time, retention of information will be much higher. With our built-in AI, our mobile micro learning app can track your employee’s progress and hurdles. In the retention moments, it will focus on the parts they have difficulties with. Not to forget, employees can choose to repeat a relevant learning moment if they spot their own knowledge gap.

They can do this by searching the app for tags with our search function, this will then generate the relevant learning moments, corresponding to the searched tags. These relevant learning moments will pop up, so they can be done once over.

Of course you as employer can check their progress as well and compliment when it goes great. This way, if necessary, you can provide support and motivation to those who may need it.

The training reaches all of your employees at the same time

Less classroom info sessions need to be arranged and less people need to be away from the store to follow this training (double win!). It can be launched to every employee, in every store, all around the world, at the same time. The future truly is now.
Goodbye to complicated schedules to figure out when you can send everybody to this new training but still need to have the store covered. Mobile microlearning brings the information to your employees and nobody has to go anywhere.
Another big pro is the fact that a newbie can start learning at the moment they join your company, no need to wait for a prescheduled classroom session. Immediate action!

Personalized mobile microlearning keeps the employees engaged

Sales associates can choose what to learn and focus on the subjects they’re interested in most. Afterwards they can finish the rest. It is all up to them to decide how they digest the available retail sales training. By offering small increments of training, you get rid of the usual “dread” employees have when confronted with new information to learn.
It makes it fun, engaging and even touches on the competitive side as you can motivate your employees to reach certain high scores before a predetermined date!

Mobile devices are everywhere and if you look at social media apps like Instagram, these offer bite sized chunks of information as well. You can only post 60 sec videos on Instagram, for example.
Mobile microlearning works the same way in that it offers short, digestible blocks of information.
Employees are much more inclined to start a learning moment, if they know it will be engaging, personalized and relevant. And to top it all off, it’ll only take them about 5 minutes a day!

New collections entering stores at a high pace, sales associates that are not always full-timers, but also students or seasonal workers and the increasingly knowledgeable customers.
These are just a few challenges of sales in retail today. Of course you need to be on the lookout for the most effective, engaging way of training and educating your employees.
With mobile microlearning, you can avoid the usual catches coming along with the old-school classroom trainings!

 

Source reference:
1. ‘5 Common Problems With Retail Sales Training And How To Fix Them’ – Yoobic, 1 August 2019
2. ‘6 Key Benefits to Mobile Learning’ – Suresh DN, 29 August 2018
3. ‘5 Training challenges and e-learning solutions for the Retail Industry’ – CommLab India Bloggers, 10 May 2018
4. ‘7 awesome advangatges of Mobile Learning’ – John Laskaris 17 January 2018
5. ‘What the advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning are’ – Priyanka Gautam, 23 November 2018

onboarding retail employees
Employee Engagement

The best way to onboard employees in retail

Most of us know it as one of the most difficult parts in retail to find the right employees and keep them interested and motivated. As a matter of fact, 30% of new employees leave within the first year. No wonder it is perceived as an ongoing battle. Well, we’re here to tell you:

It shouldn’t be!

With the right tools and mindset, you are on your way to a well-educated and eager-to-learn team, that will blow your socks off.

And honestly, we’re here to do the same. Stay with us for an overview of the pitfalls and the process of onboarding in retail and some tips and tricks to make your job easier.

Let’s dive right in with the most pressing concerns in onboarding:

Pitfalls

With the right onboarding track there’s a 91% chance of keeping the newcomer. Without it, chances reduce to 30%.

Furthermore, a good onboarding promises a productivity that is 54% higher and 34% faster than without one. Sounds like enough reason to invest some time in that more elaborate welcome, don’t you think?

And that’s exactly where the problem lies: Time!

We understand that in retail, time is gold and that there isn’t always enough of it to train your employees. It’s also common that training sessions are organized by the head office on certain days, so there might be a long waiting time to get your employee’s training on.

You know how it goes: a new employee starts in summer. It’s a busy time with sales and seasonal changes. To get them on board, you would need to take an employee out of their workflow to train them. This means that you lose two people (the trainer and the trainee) on the floor, and this for a large amount of time. It’s not an ideal situation and it doesn’t always work like that.

As a result, there’s a lot of learning by doing or a one-off explanation to train employees. Experience tells us that’s not the way to go. As you may suspect there’s a lot to gain with the right onboarding. A small time-investment can go a long way!

Let’s check out how to establish the right setting for motivational learning.

Process

Preboarding

Most of the time, there’s a certain period between signing the contract and the employee starting at your company. It’s important to maintain contact during this period to create involvement and trust with your new team member.

You can start by sending some congratulations! Sounds easy, but it proves to be enormously effective.

You can address the interests that are currently living within the team to involve not only the new employee, but also your existing team. Remember to explain how the new team member can find their contact person and set up a short introduction.

Of course, you can’t forget the administrative obligations, but be sure not to start with it. You wouldn’t want to come across as another boring employer, do you?

First day

When the start day has finally come, you can make sure to give the newbie a warm welcome (gift baskets for the win!). Be sure to make it a personal welcome to make them feel right at home.

Following days

Most of the companies stop there. But with our help, you can go that little bit further.

Make sure the new employee knows that their opinion matters and that, when working with humans, mistakes are inevitable (we are only machines in the proverbial sense of the word). Just remember to let them know, help is never far away.

First weeks

During those first weeks you can teach them all about the products and services you provide and where they fit in.

Microlearning is the perfect tool to present the company and set expectations. This will also decrease the amount of time you need to invest. It’s a win-win situation!

First months

There’s no need to stop while you’re ahead! Do regular check-ups on the employee’s knowledge. This too can be perfectly sustained with mobile learning!

As you see, it’s important to keep at it. There’s no need to stop after two weeks and let the new employee figure it out for themselves. In retail, they will play an important role in your customer’s experience. There’s no better investment than this!

To summarize

There are some pitfalls, but there are equally as much solutions for it. It’s just a matter of investing in some good onboarding!

Are you convinced? Not yet? No problem. We’ve got some more tips and tricks for you!

Tips and tricks

Our first and best tip is microlearning: there’s no better way to give a lot of information in 3 to 5 minutes a day and retain that info by using interesting video material.

It’s a lot less time invasive and a lot more performant then using another team member to give the training.

This way, you can also keep the training coming for several weeks and elaborate where you want. The existing team can benefit from this as well.

Picture this: a new season, a new collection! That’s a lot of information to take in. You would need a couple of hours to present the information and after that…it’s all gone (like that biology exam you studied so hard for). There’s no retention at all and a lot of time wasted.

With microlearning you don’t have that kind of problem. It gives you and the employee a lot more freedom and isn’t that what we all strive for?

Our second tip can be used in the microlearning platform as well. Wouldn’t it be great if the Managing Director presented himself and the company in a personal video? That video can be shown in a learning moment and followed up by a couple of questions to keep those brain juices flowing. It’s personal and effective: Genius, if you ask us!

Another thing you could do is integrate some trivia about the company or the team to keep it personal and fun, e.g. Did you know Emma loves her spaghetti bolognese? That too can be integrated into a microlearning platform. Win-win again!

Conclusion: A good onboarding is crucial for a strong collaboration between you and your employees!

There are only advantages here:

  • A smoother learning of products and services;
  • Higher productivity;
  • Faster work;
  • More work-related satisfaction with new and existing employees;
  • Better staff retention;
  • The new employees become an ambassador of your company.

What’s not to like?

You may have read between the lines that microlearning is a great add-on when it comes to onboarding. And that’s where MobieTrain comes in!

As Ray Riley, CEO at Progress Retail says it so beautifully:

“The culture of the retail firm needs to embrace continuing education and lifelong learning.”

We couldn’t have said it better!