How microlearning is transforming employee empowerment: Guy Van Neck, CEO and Founder, MobieTrain

What is the true potential of HR and how can technology help us to achieve it?

In this installment of our HRD Tech Founders Q&A series, Guy Van Neck, CEO & Founder, MobieTrain, explains how microlearning is taking learning to the next level, putting career development in the hands of employees through technology.

---

What is MobieTrain?

MobieTrain revolutionises workplace learning with our mobile-first, microlearning platform. We empower employees to drive their own career development and retain knowledge through bite-sized training content that they love. With our personalised, gamified learning paths, it only takes 5 minutes a day to boost productivity, build knowledge and engage your employees!

Our solution exists of 3 elements:

1. OUR CMS: You can easily upload branded content through our intuitive Content Management System. Whether you already have a wealth of training material or you need help creating learning content from scratch, we’ll set you up for success.
2. OUR APPLICATION: Inspire your employees with knowledge at their fingertips, wherever they are. Seamlessly fit training into their workday and make learning fun again with training on any web-enabled device. Turn your employees into brand ambassadors by teaching them your company values, missions and goals!
3. OUR DASHBOARD: Analyse and optimise knowledge gaps to quickly improve results with our easy to use dashboard. Discover exactly how your team, colleagues and employees are performing and gather the business insights needed to drive real change.

Why was it necessary to create MobieTrain?

Knowledge is power! We want to empower employees with the knowledge they need to succeed in a fun and engaging way. However, 80% of knowledge from traditional LMS and in-person training is forgotten after 30 days and 65%-75% of companies report that their employees are overwhelmed.

MobieTrain changes this. Our disruptive solution is based around Piotr Wozniak’s Knowledge Retention Methodology. We provide short, bite-sized learning content directly to employees daily with spaced repetition to ensure that they retain, and engage with, their new knowledge. Employees drive their own learning and development by accessing training anywhere, from any device. We use gamification, video and multimedia to keep employees motivated and performing.

Save time, integrate with existing LMS and personalise your learning path to create an intuitive and user-friendly training tool to empower your employees!

Why is HR technology crucial to the success of a business?

The world has gone digital. Everything has to go faster, more efficient and more effective. In the mobile revolution, the way that we consume content has changed. We consume a vast amount of content every day, on the go, across multiple devices. Our brain can only retain a certain amount of information at a time, so our L&D training has to compete for attention.

As consumers, this content on demand is a good thing. It enables us to be savvier, more knowledgeable customers and shoppers. At a tap of a button, we can instantly compare quality, prices and reputation before making that final purchase or decision.

As employees, savvier consumers are making our jobs more challenging. Now, more than ever, product, brand and industry knowledge need to exceed customer expectations.

How can an organization most effectively implement new HR technology?

We believe that microlearning is a very effective and efficient way of learning. However, we are not looking to replace the traditional LMS, LXP or e-learning systems. We are looking to reinforce the existing knowledge taught by both LMS and classroom trainings with 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.

Through delivering microlearning on mobile, organisations can support employees in training anywhere, at any time, and are able to overcome the challenge of reaching a remote and diverse workforce.  Most importantly, organisations can use MobieTrain to 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.

What do you think is the biggest challenge affecting organisations today?

Time. We expect people to know more than ever before, yet there simply doesn’t seem to be enough time to learn everything in a fun and effective way. And even if we can find the time, we forget most of what we’ve learned after only 30 days.

“80% of traditional training is forgotten after 30 days”

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.

The science alone is not enough to deliver results, without also providing the best channel to reach employees and the best type of content to engage them.

Mobile is the perfect channel to support employees in training anywhere, at anytime, to tackle the challenge of time.

Which emerging technologies do you think will transform HR in the future?

We see brilliant HR tech solutions entering the market on a daily basis. however, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. That’s why we believe that it’s more important to find the best way to integrate with existing platforms to create one ultimate tool to transform training within HR.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, just add another cog!

Through exciting collaborations with other leading HR Tech platforms, we can offer workplaces a full suite of learning tools. This combines our existing microlearning and mobile expertise with social learning and communication, to empower employees to learn within their flow of work

The future of HR lies in collaboration, co-creation and integrating with other successful software, in order to achieve more, faster, together.