Employees ranging in age from 22 to 37, or as they’re more commonly known — Millennials, make up more than half of the current workforce. This is why it's more important than ever to create training that is both engaging and relevant.
You’re visiting a new city with a group of friends and are looking for something to do and somewhere tasty to eat. What do you do?
*Spoiler Alert* If you’re a Millennial you may have a different approach than those older than you!
The Traditional Method: You pull out your paper map, call a friend, or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, even ask a local.
The Millennial Method: You whip out your phone and, equipped with your arsenal of the #trending (read latest and greatest) apps, just “Google it.”
It’s very apparent that Millennials have a different approach to gathering information than do other generations. 50% of millennials don’t feel it is necessary to be in a classroom environment in order to learn — in fact, many of them embrace working remotely, which affords them the flexibility and on-demand learning opportunities they desire. Often times, digital on-demand training is simply outdated or not accessible while completing the task at hand.
We’ve all heard the gossip…“Millennials this” & “Millennials that”, but one of the key differences in how this generation learns comes from how they acquire new information. Those older than millennials will most often ask a friend/family member, read the manual, or find someone that has related experience. They seek a more relational & personal approach you could say.
Many millennials would argue they are relational & have personal interaction as well. However, the difference comes with the type of situation. If they are in need of information, they are more likely to be transactional than relational. Which is why for transactional information — they will just Google it. It’s faster, more efficient, and generally more accurate.
What does all this mean? How do we continue to engage this generation in our company?
- When the Subject Matter Experts create the training you end up with higher quality and more accurate training material. The Telephone Game may have been fun in elementary school but is not so fun while learning a new job.
- Learning in small chunks has been proven to be more effective. You have probably seen the paper folding exercise where you start with a full piece of paper & then continue to fold it down explaining at different increments this is what they said, this is what you heard, this is what you remember. If we apply this concept — it’s the same thing. Bite-sized learning has a much greater digestion rate than large chunked content.
All of this to say it makes perfect sense — in order to increase engagement for millennials, use iorad! iorad embodies those 7 tips enabling your organization to create engaging, interactive, up-to-date content with such ease. Better yet, it’s your internal company “Google”! Imagine all the applications that run the company, having the instruction manuals fully searchable right in their browser. Doesn’t get much better, does it? It actually does, but that’s a post for another time. However, I will leave you with one word… LIVE!