Microlearning with Walmart

How Walmart takes big training and transforms it into bite-size chunks.

You may have read my previous articles “Walmart Academy: The Shortcut To Success” and “What is Just-In-Time Learning” If you haven’t I encourage you to take a look. 

Have you ever helped your grandmother bake cookies? I have.

• Did I study culinary arts? No
• Do I cook? No 
• Do I know how to use an oven? :-) 

My grandmother is great at instructing how to prepare a dish in steps that are micro and easy to follow and will contribute to making a world-class dessert, dinner, dish. 

Same with my job today, I don’t know all the eLearning programs inside and out but through Microlearning, I was trained on how to create a particular eLearning module and edit its content because I need to deliver new curriculums with content & graphics.

Walmart uses Microlearning strategy to teach you exactly what you need to know today on this particular task to get this project done.

Besides having a database of “Best Practices” and “One Best Way” we also micro-teach each other (Upskill) and we strategize to work around the short attention spans of ourselves and most learners.

Our fast pace retail environment requires us to learn quickly and deliver quality results immediately. We learn parts of our jobs hands-on and we are often short on time to dedicate hours and days in classrooms and seminars. Microlearning is a strategy for quickly closing skill and knowledge gaps. It is an instructional approach for many situations especially when the business needs change so frequently. 

For example we do not require our store Department Managers to know the entire store operations, or have a degree in Business or Economics, but through Microlearning we teach each person how to take care of a 4x4 section, how to receive a truck and how to prevent loss in one department which will contribute to the overall P&L of the store, market and region. It is tremendously effective especially for those of us that graduated from colleges a while back and need refreshers here & there.

In conclusion, “we are all pieces of a puzzle” our micro-tasks contribute to a big delivery. The advantage of Microlearning is that it makes achieving complex things possible in the quickest sprint of time. We may get intimidated by a huge project or a new challenge, but if you use this strategy to break it down, find what it needs, cover the knowledge and skill gaps; you will deliver. We set you up for success in micro and easy steps and as the result of that, we have won several Brandon Hall Awards of Excellence for our trainings.

Let me ask you, when was the last time you used Microlearning at your job? or at home? What was that particular skill/instructions you needed to know to get that one task done?

Lily 

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