The manufacturing industry is one of the most important ones that help with daily operations throughout our country. Not only is it the cornerstone of the global economy, but it helps drive economic growth, distribution, and provides jobs to millions of people. Getting up to date on proper safety training and company compliances is crucial for any manufacturing company, but finding ways to train staff that are effective can be difficult.
Microlearning is a technique for training staff that is proven to have a beneficial impact on how staff retain information. This helps prevent staff burning out due to an onslaught of information thrown at them at once.
Check out more about microlearning in the manufacturing industry and how it can effectively help staff learn more and use it in everyday scenarios!
More About Microlearning in the Manufacturing Industry
Microlearning can greatly benefit manufacturing staff and is life changing for many companies that see positive effects y!
Learning about the benefits of microlearning is essential for many types of businesses, but it can make a huge difference in the manufacturing industry especially. The manufacturing industry is important on not only a national level, but global–and ensuring that your staff are properly trained on daily operations and safety compliances is a must in order to run a successful business.
What is Microlearning?
Many training courses for staff in the manufacturing industry consist of new hire training for an introduction to the company and their values, safety procedures and compliances, production basics, along with communication and time management. Oftentimes training courses can stretch over a period of multiple days with information hurled at staff –but this is not entirely the best way to go about training.
Keeping your staff safe and informed is crucial in the manufacturing industry and microlearning can help make the difference. Microlearning consists of delivering bite-sized pieces of information at a time in the forms of short videos, quick question-and-answers, infographics, and flexibility for mobile learning. This method increases staff retention to 50%, improves engagement from anywhere to six to ten times, and gives staff the flexibility to learn on their time by accessing the information via their phone.
How Does Microlearning Affect Manufacturing Staff?
For manufacturing staff, microlearning has a ton of positive benefits that can help with retaining information for many important dynamics in the company. Whether it’s learning about how to work and operate new equipment and machinery, safety procedures, or company compliances, microlearning in manufacturing can be less overwhelming for staff and help keep them attentive and informed without the extra stress of retaining tons of information at once.
Microlearning can also be used on the machines and equipment that they are using throughout their shift. QR codes can be attached to them and an employee can scan and pull up a short tutorial on how to use it. This just-in-time training tactic helps to keep staff on the floor while reducing downtime, and it breaks down information in three to ten minute videos to make them quick to the point and easy to understand.
Here are some other common benefits of implementing microlearning into the manufacturing industry:
- Improves retention with learning about one key takeaway each session
- Allows flexibility to train on-the-go without any extra time being pulled from the floor and fit training into their schedule
- Helps with safety and compliances by allowing staff to interact with modules that provide consistent training for everyone
- Comes in a wide variety of formats that can help staff learn at their own pace in their own preferred method
- Helps to improve any gaps in skills through interactive quizzes to find potential problem areas to address
Top Ways to Use Microlearning in the Manufacturing Industry
Microlearning can be what your staff need to help retain information better–and these ways can help guide them!
Trying to find efficient ways to use microlearning in the manufacturing industry can be difficult if you’re not sure where to start. While there are many important topics to cover for new hires and re-skilling and re-training for senior staff, microlearning can help them understand the information, retain it better, and do the training on their own terms.
Here are some of the top ways to implement microlearning in the manufacturing industry today!
Microlearn with Digital Signage
Sometimes the most important thing you need to have is the right technology when it comes to training staff, including when you’re trying out new microlearning techniques. Digital signage is a great way to create content and present it for microlearning in the manufacturing industry and all you need is a LED/LCD monitor or screen, a media player, and a content management system (CMS).
All of this is needed to create and include training videos, infographics, or other short-form content for staff to understand and learn about important concepts for how the company works, its values, safety compliances, or simply how to use certain pieces of equipment. Digital signage can help to create effective content that is attention-grabbing and allows staff to understand concepts on their own terms and without an overload of information.
QR Codes on Equipment
Many manufacturing companies are consistently getting new equipment to use or even just upgraded ones that work better than older models. If you get a new piece of equipment, employ microlearning techniques to allow staff to learn how to use them at their own pace and time with QR codes.
QR codes are easy to scan on your mobile device that link to a short video tutorial on how to use it. While this isn’t recommended for brand new machines and equipment unfamiliar to staff, it can be great for updated versions that are slightly different compared to its previous models.
These allow staff short, quick-to-the-point, and easy-to-follow videos that they can pull up on their own time or even use it as a way to learn with one another and improve teamwork, engagement, and communications. It can provide accurate service histories where staff can also view the full maintenance log right from their cell phone.
Quizzes For Safety Protocols
One of the most important parts of any manufacturing job that staff should always do is follow safety protocols due to the amount of heavy machinery and dangerous materials that are used on a daily basis. Not only does this help to protect staff and prevent injuries or fatalities, but it also leads to higher productivity and boosts staff morale too.
It can be hard to come up with immersive ways to help train or even reskill staff in safety protocols and compliances–and with microlearning, interactive quizzes can be the best way to do so. Doing safety check quizzes using a company app or interacting with a QR code through digital signage can help staff take the time to reinforce protocols and how important they truly are.
Doing a simple two-minute quiz with a safety scenario and having staff answer what they would do in the situation or even spotting potential hazards in a photo can be a simple and immersive way to get staff familiar or refresh their memory on these crucial protocols.
Gamification in the Workplace
There are many people who love to play games, and they can even be a great way to gain the focus of staff for important manufacturing concepts, protocols, and how to use and operate machinery. Microlearning can be fun for staff and gamifying important modules for employees to complete is a great way to boost engagement in manufacturing jobs.
Gamification is one of the best ways to maximize training for staff where you can create modules to teach employees how to handle hazardous and non-hazardous materials, manage an assembly line, how to operate a specific machine, or even PPE protocols. These modules can include rewards, such as badges, achievements, and even ranked leaderboard positions to boost employee engagement and create some fun and friendly competition between one another.
Why Digital Signage and Shift’s Features Can Play a Role in Microlearning in Manufacturing
Shift has unique features to create content to boost employee engagement and productivity for manufacturing companies!
The manufacturing industry plays an important role in the daily operations on both a national and global level, so it’s important to ensure that staff are properly trained on how to work heavy machinery, safety protocols, and overall company values. Shift is a content management system (CMS) that can be paired with digital signage to create immersive content that can be used to help train employees through microlearning with tons of unique and helpful features.
Shift: How Microlearning with This Digital Signage CMS Platform is Revolutionary
There are many CMS platforms to choose from that offer unique features but all have the same goal in mind–boost employee engagement, communication, and productivity. Shift is one of the best CMS platforms available that aims to deepen the manager/employee relationship, help build a strong team, and even celebrate the accomplishments of your fellow peers through recognition and spotlights.
Shift can help manufacturing companies with the use of their CMS features to create diverse, interactive, and immersive content perfect for microlearning and keeping staff educated. From creating safety protocol reminders, setting up QR codes to take daily quizzes or gamifying the workplace, this CMS platform has everything that you need to create a fun and engaging way of learning in the manufacturing world.
Other Ways to Create Content Using Shift
Shift has a ton of features that can benefit any manufacturing company and the right tools to property train staff too. Here are some other ways that managers can interact and boost engagement with their manufacturing staff:
- Increase employee engagement through recognition and appreciation
- Celebrate staff birthdays, work anniversaries, and other achievements
- Show training videos
- Employee spotlights
- Interactive polls for staff to anonymously complete
- Expands internal communications
- Allows staff to retrain and re-skill in key trainings
- Helps leaders learn more about staff
- Encourages employees to do work harder
- Increases productivity
- Create diverse content using pictures, videos, or documents
- Use as a wayfinding and navigation system
- Broadcast company announcements, updated policies, etc.
- Use to post emergency alerts
- Streamline workflow and post frequent updates about each day’s tasks
Microlearn the Right Way: Train Manufacturing Staff in an Engaging Way That’ll Benefit Them
Keeping staff engaged during training sessions can be quite difficult, especially for companies that are still stuck in the old-school way of doing so. Long, drawn out training courses are proven to prevent staff from retaining information, but implementing the use of digital signage and microlearning can be the best way to change this. For manufacturing staff, it’s important to properly train them on crucial safety compliances, how to operate heavy machinery, and even company compliances to ensure that they are staying safe while getting the job done–and microlearning can play a huge role.
Make sure to consider using Shift’s unique features on their CMS platform and learn the ways of microlearning to help benefit your manufacturing staff today!
