Safety Training That Sticks: Why Microlearning Works

Hello, welcome to the WorkSAFE Podcast. On each episode, we share conversations about workplace safety strategies, work comp expertise, and stories to help you on your journey to a safe, healthy, and strong workplace. The WorkSAFE Podcast is brought to you by MEM. Before we begin today, we want to thank you all for listening and ask a favor. We are always working to reach more people. So if you find our content valuable, we would appreciate it if you would share our show with others and give us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. With that, let’s get today’s conversation started. Here’s our host, Heather Carl.

Heather Carl: Welcome to the WorkSAFE Podcast. When most employers think about training, they picture a scheduled session. An hour, maybe longer, with slides, notes, and a sign-in sheet. It checks the box, but does it change behavior? In today’s workplaces, where attention is limited and employees are balancing multiple demands, the traditional approach doesn’t always stick. That’s where microlearning comes in. Short, focused, intentional learning moments designed to deliver what employees need when they need it, without overwhelming them. The question isn’t whether you can fit more into a training session. It’s whether the right things are landing at all.

To help us explore that, we’re joined by Mark Woodward, Director of Training and Safety Manager with Sellenriek Construction. Mark has spent decades designing and delivering safety training and continues to evolve how learning happens in real-world environments. Together, we’ll discuss how microlearning can transform safety training and workplace education, and what that means for your business. Welcome back to the podcast, Mark.

Mark Woodward: Thank you very much for having me.

Heather Carl: Having you back on the podcast, when most employers think about training, they picture something longer, maybe a traditional format. Got to be at least an hour, have the slides, all that stuff. So if you could share with us maybe a little bit about what the reality is: is longer actually better, or is that assumption getting in the way?

Mark Woodward: It’s interesting, because I’ll ask in seminars how long should safety training take, and everybody always just automatically says an hour, and nobody really knows why we’ve chosen an hour. But I can assure you, after years and years of studying this and seeing this myself, after 15 minutes, the adult learner is done. They have a lot to do. People have a lot of pressures on them. They have work to do. There’s a million things going on in people’s lives. And after about 10 minutes, you lose the adult learner. But for some reason in industry, we just do the hour.

Now, you can make an hour or longer training session work. I know, I’ve done it many times, but you have to have a lot of activities and learner activities. And it’s a tremendous amount of work for the instructor or the facilitator to make that session go. So yeah, you can do an hour. It’s a lot of work. But if you’re just doing an hour, just to do an hour, I highly recommend that folks reevaluate what they’re doing from a training standpoint and look at how adult learners learn. Really study that. There’s about a million websites online that you can check out. Just type into Google, how do adult learners learn, or ChatGPT, and you’ll come up with some really great things.

I don’t know if you have activities and things and you have a really skilled instructor there that can do that. Great businesses have a lot to talk about, and my concern as a director of training is, do our people know how to do their job and can they do their job? So you’re actually looking at safety, you’re looking at maintenance, you’re looking at quality, you’re looking at efficiency, right? There’s a lot of things that go into someone’s job. And we have a lot of training to do. And I’m not sure we can talk about all the topics that we need to in one hour sessions. We would never actually be out doing the work. There are 100 topics that we need to cover on a routine basis in a year’s time. There’s a lot there, right?

So microlearning is a big deal, because we would be able to do more training and break the most important aspects of that job or task or skill down into five minute or 10 minute or 15 minute chunks. We can actually do more training and more education that fits the adult learner and how they learn, in less time. So I’m a big fan. And MEM taught me four things about safety management, and that is: number one, you need to have rules in place. Number two, you have to train those rules. Number three, you have to monitor those rules to make sure that they’re being followed. Number four is you have to do corrective action.

That’s the same with training. We do training and we do the topic, whatever that topic is, we provide that training, but then we don’t follow up. You actually need to do those four things in order to do training. What are the rules? What are the quality expectations? What are the maintenance expectations? Can we break those down, and all of us as a management team agree on those things? Two, we would train those things. Three, our staff would go out and monitor to say, did the training actually stick, or is it having an impact? Is it making a change? And then four, if not, we need to reevaluate, corrective action, reevaluate. So that’s the way I see it, Heather. I think microlearning is big. I think it allows us to expand the topics that we talk about beyond safety. And I think we need to do it, because there’s so much that our companies need to talk about from a quality, maintenance, safety and production standpoint.

Heather Carl: I think that was a great way of breaking down what the term microlearning actually means in practice. And it made me wonder, you mentioned something that was really important: you can do more training that fits really the adult learner, their learning style, their attention span, just in general, competing with all the other things adults have going on in their lives. And when you said more, I think that can be a great thing. But I wonder, can you also share what microlearning doesn’t mean? Are there things where it’s, don’t just do it for XYZ reasons, make sure you’re intentional? So I wonder if you could share a little bit about what you wouldn’t want somebody to think that it meant, just based on the name.

Mark Woodward: Microlearning may have a negative connotation, because it may be seen as not enough information or not going in depth. You may have a technical topic, but it forces you to break that topic down into the need to know information. And I think that’s critical. What is critical to making this task happen in a way that promotes quality, ensures the maintenance of the equipment and the tools that we use, makes sure that we are safe, and that it’s done in an efficient manner, meaning we’re not wasteful?

I think we’ve fought it for eons, I really do. I think we’ve just been stuck in this classroom mentality, that every new training has to be this organized classroom thing. And that’s just not the way it is anymore. The thing I notice is when employers will relate to this: cell phones. Cell phones are a problem with driving, or a problem with distraction on a job site, and all of our companies anymore have these cell phone policies that say that you’re not supposed to use your cell phone when you’re at work. And then you catch an employee on the cell phone, they’re on social media. It’s been a problem issue, an employer issue, for 15, 20 years now.

In microlearning, why don’t we take advantage of that? People are watching social media videos, Instagram, YouTube. They’re watching short videos all day long on their phone. And it’s funny, my iPhone sends me a report every Sunday. It says screen time, and I’m shocked at it, because it’s the amount of time somebody uses their phone, the average in a week. And sometimes it’s a lot, but that’s how we do business now. And we do business with our phones. The phone is always in our hands. We do everything with our phones. So my opinion is, why don’t we take advantage of that? Why don’t we put the material in a way that people actually want to watch, that they could actually consume and actually learn something, and then move on?

I need to know that people are learning things and then using those things on a job site. And when you actually evaluate the ways that we communicate information to people, like a safety plan, it’s just like a Word document or a PDF document. Or it’s in a learning management system. It’s a black and white thing that they read. They hit submit. And yeah, we get some retention of signatures and things like that. But that’s it. That’s all they have. And how does that make change? That’s the thing. This training that we have to do has to make change. And we’re disconnecting from how employees learn, how adults learn. We’ve disconnected completely from that.

Negative connotations, other than folks may say it’s just not in depth enough: I think if your topic that you’re talking about is going to take a lot of time, then I encourage you to really break that down. Break it up into maybe five, six microlearning chunks. Break it down to the need to know information. And then assess that topic, assess that issue in the field and say, are we really having a problem with this, or where are the specific problems, and can I break that microlearning topic down into a way that actually addresses the issue that we’re seeing out in the field? So microlearning forces us to really break the job down, focus on what’s important, focus on the problem areas, and then take advantage of how people communicate now. And that is social media, all the different social media channels. Why can’t we be a part of that with our company and share messages to employees that way?

Heather Carl: Yeah, I think you definitely answered that question with a lot of insight. And so what I’m taking away from it was that essentially the term micro doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s just a meaningless sound bite or some quick 30 second thing that isn’t important, but instead it is just a way of breaking down bigger concepts. And I wonder too, have you noticed that when people do approach things like this, you’ve mentioned it means you get more training, so it’s maybe even more consistent? So if you’ve got 10 or 15 minutes a day versus an hour to be able to go over safety with your group, that consistency seems to me like it might help yield better results than a one or two hour training every six months or something.

Mark Woodward: Oh, for sure. Imagine being able to watch that video segment anytime you want. So I watched it once. That’s the thing about classroom training is once it’s done, it’s gone. You’re hoping that they can remember what you told them once. And I’ve been through this many times. An employer would call me and say, hey, can you come out and do our annual safety meeting? And I thought, my goodness, what a waste of time, because they’re not going to remember any of it. You do one safety meeting and then you want that to actually have results in the field. Who’s going to remember any of that? And then you hand out a safety program that’s 343 pages long and you make them sign the back and expect that to actually have an impact. It’s just a waste of time.

And with the strategy that I’m working to employ, I put the video out there and then it stays out there. It’s kind of like a blog. Put the video out there. If they want to watch it 15 times, they can. And then consistency, Heather, is critical, because if you have 40 crews working in 40 different states, how do you make sure these jobs are consistent? The tasks are consistent, the equipment is consistent, the quality is consistent, the maintenance, the daily routines, how they start their day. Consistency is king. Variation is bad. And when you break these jobs down and say, these are the five, eight, ten, six things that you have to get right, and if we get these right, we will be safer, we’ll be more efficient, our equipment will last longer and we’ll actually be way more productive. If you can break those things down and agree on them as a management team, now you have consistency, and that’s what you want.

But it’s when people don’t have access to the info, and even if they did have access to the info, it’s in a 40 page technical document, it’s very difficult. Also, the average literacy rate for adults across the different states: Missouri is somewhere in the fifth to seventh grade literacy rate for adults in the state. So safety people I know, I have run around with them for years, are great at writing technical documents. We’ll write white papers all day long about a safety topic. And then we’ll stick it out there for people to read. I don’t know how many folks can actually digest that technical content. And I know it, because when you ask people, have you read the owner’s manual of that machine, have you read the operator’s manual, 100 percent of the time they will tell you, no, I’ve never read it.

Okay, so how do I take the most important points out of that operator’s manual and boil them down into the six most important things you need to know to run this piece of equipment? Then I put it out there in a 30 second microlearning module, whatever that is, and then say, watch this. And then that will create your consistency. And then that module, you actually make that module where they actually want to watch it. And you do that with your own video, your own people, your own job sites, your own jobs, your own tasks. And they can relate to that and they’ll want to watch it. So that’s what I’m working on.

Heather Carl: You just touched on a few things, Mark, that really helped us understand how microlearning can be a tangible thing, how it can actually show up in an organization day to day, on the floor, in the field, wherever your work sites are. And you mentioned video as one option, short videos. Things that can create consistency for audiences geographically, but also have staying power. It’s not just a training and then you sign your sheet and you’re done. It’s something you can go back and reference. Are there other things that you have found to be effective as far as ways to actually make that microlearning tangible, outside of just maybe a video option?

Mark Woodward: Industry has done microlearning for years. One example would be a toolbox talk. Toolbox talks are super popular. Every industry association, especially in construction, produces toolbox talks, because they are short in duration, easy to manage, easy to deploy in the field, easy to read, with topics that are easy to convey and comprehend and understand, right? Toolbox talks are usually a one page document with maybe 12, 15, 18 safety points or important points on them. And they can be read in the field in about five minutes, with maybe another three minutes of conversation to discuss the topic. And that’s it. Then it’s moving on. Those toolbox talks are a big deal, because construction companies do them on a daily basis and they have for years.

We’ve been using microlearning for years, also the creation of learning management system modules. There’s a lot of learning management systems out there with payroll systems and things like that. Those modules are usually five to ten minutes in length. Heck, back in the day there were boxes of the William Shatner safety shorts, and those were VHS tapes that were only five minutes long. But they were five minute videos on VHS tapes on lockout tagout and safety topics like that. And so those five minute safety videos have tremendous safety topics. Those quick, easy-to-administer, easy-to-use methods for getting standardized messages out to your people are very important.

And I’m going to tell you, I’ve been down the toolbox talk route. I’ve done that, I’ve written a lot of them, and I highly encourage employers to really write their own. You can use content that other people create, but once again, if you don’t make it relatable to your people and their jobs and their tools and what they do, then it’s just going to be a topic. And I know that there’s some compliance topics out there and there’s some need to know topics from a compliance standpoint, but let’s get focused on the things that matter and the things that are causing issues, and the good things that you want to keep good, right? So I encourage everybody to write their own toolbox talks, write their own videos, focus on what matters, break it down into 10 points, five points, don’t get technical. That’s a hard thing for us to break, but try not to get technical, because what you’re looking for is results, right?

Heather Carl: Yeah, and I think toolbox talks is a great example, and that’s something too that can live out there in the atmosphere, right? So share that across, and keeping it as simple as possible so that if somebody does download it or click on it. Through, you mentioned, management systems, having it stored there: do you have any thoughts on effective ways to incorporate a learning management system with the microlearning concept? Like how those two things come together, good ways to do that?

Mark Woodward: Yes, I’ve been really looking at how to integrate our current payroll and learning management system, that HR suite, that HR management platform. I see the learning management system as a way to officially track training. And that would be something where you really need to officially track training for compliance purposes, but also these are very important topics to the company, and we need to see official documentation. So in those situations, you would want to use a learning management system, because it tracks activity and you can produce a report that you can show for compliance purposes or investigative purposes.

So an LMS is perfectly fine, but once again, I do recommend folks develop their own content. And I’ve just been using PowerPoint. You can record your voice to PowerPoint, and you can go down through a PowerPoint and copy and paste photos into it and text, and then at the very end of your document there, you can publish it to an MP4 file and then upload that into your learning management system, and then build your own quiz, three or five questions. And that quiz, once again, Heather, the quiz is a microlearning opportunity. The quiz just reviews what they know, right?

You can also take that same information, though, that is very important and you’re putting in an official capacity in a learning management system, kick it out and put it on an internal intranet, or put it on your non-public YouTube channel, right? Take that information and use it across multiple ways to communicate with employees. Email out the MP4 file, stick it on an internal non-public YouTube channel, put it on Facebook, wherever. But you’re going to want to do both. You’re going to want to use multiple platforms to communicate that important message. So you can use an LMS, you can use Microsoft Engage, which is like an internal Facebook page, or you can use paper. It’s up to you. But I do encourage employers to look at multiple methods. I use HubSpot to email safety messages. That gives me the ability to track. I use Microsoft Engage, I use regular email, I use PDFs, I use videos. So I’m actually sending safety messages out, and quality and mentorship messages out, across multiple platforms.

Heather Carl: So I think what you’re doing essentially in the example you’ve given is really integrating some type of a learning management system that allows employers to understand if people are engaging, but at the same time, you’re making everything available across different mediums, because people have different learning styles. Some may want a piece of paper, some may prefer video, all those things. So making it available in lots of ways seems key to the success.

Mark Woodward: Absolutely. I’ll do a one hour learning management module on damage prevention of buried utilities. And some people may love that and they want to spend the time, and it’s an advanced module. Then I will take the same content out of that module and I’ll make a one minute video, and I’ll put the one minute video on Engage, or I will email it out through HubSpot. I’ll make a shorter version in the learning management system. But it all comes down to consistency in what are the most important things folks need to know about that topic. And now, once you have that sealed and signed and dated content, that’s your policy.

Now you start to see consistency across your company, because everybody’s been trained in that one way to do the job, in the correct way to do the job. So yeah, it’s kind of like an internal marketing plan, right? You don’t just have one way of reaching people to do marketing on your company, right? You have 15 different ways. That’s kind of what you have to do with safety. You have to have 15 different ways to promote the consistent message. And some folks, like you said, like paper, some folks like the learning management system, some folks want to just watch the video that came in their email. So that’s what I want to do: I want to appeal to as many of the different learning styles as possible.

Heather Carl: I wondered if you could share an example of maybe where, so far in your career, you’ve seen how that short, focused learning moment had more impact than say a traditional training session, and then what actually made the difference there. So maybe a real world example would be great.

Mark Woodward: We rarely get our people into a room for a lengthy, crazy long training session. Now, we do have training schools and we do those throughout the year, but it’s not all the time what we are doing. And this is intentional: breaking the information down into what people need to know. Every single morning across all of our crews, we do a stand-up meeting. All the crews have the same information. It’s emailed out, it’s sent out. We have director levels, presidents, we have folks standing there with our construction crews. And we hit these topics every day. So how do we know it works? Well, our quality scores are high, our production scores are high, and our safety scores are really high. So I think our results prove that the way we communicate and talk every morning really does help.

We do bring people into the room, but we’re in construction. And I’m telling you, to bring construction crews in, they’re normally up on their feet all day long on these job sites for 10 hours, and you stick them in a room and sit them down in front of tables and chairs, it is not good. That goes for me too. It is not pleasant. So we are taking advantage of how our crews learn. And some folks will look at it and say, wow, you need to bring them into the training room and they need to sit in there for four hours. I don’t think so, because we are able to do more topics in less time, because we’ve boiled the message down into a consistent five point message. And then when we’re out in the field, I go to the field and I monitor that. What am I seeing in the field? What are our senior managers seeing in the field? So we’re proof in the pudding as to how this works.

But what I’m also doing is broadening it to our own videos, and I’m using Canva. I’ll even get out there and I’ll just set my phone up on a truck, and I’ve got my own mic, and I’ll film that 30 second safety video right there. I have a dry erase board and I’ll put my bullet points on the board, and I’ll go out in the field and do a safety video right there. And I send out multiple safety videos a week, and I have not had any complaints. And I think that’s another thing folks worry about: what’s too much? And I don’t have an answer to that, other than I think the way people use social media and use their phones, they’re constantly on them all the time and consuming tons of content all day long. I just want to be a part of that. I want them to consume our content too. I want them to learn about safety and production in a way that makes them want to come back and watch it.

I try to make it entertaining. I try to make it fun. I try to make it fit. I do everything on our job sites. I get clips of things that they’re going to look at and say, that’s pretty cool, that’s a cool backdrop, or that’s a cool job site. And see how the proof is in the pudding: our scores show it, our customers love what we do, our safety scores show it. And we’re taking advantage of how adults learn. But we’re broadening it to more electronic videos and things going to them.

Heather Carl: It sounds like you guys, like you said, have seen a lot of great results and are really doing it your way to meet the needs of the employees, how they consume, and you just want to be a part of the content they’re already consuming. Seems like an amazing strategy that is bound to succeed. And so let’s say I’m a skeptical leader and I’m like, okay, fine, this whole microlearning thing, I get it, you’re trying to reach people in a different way and shorter stuff. If I want to do this, how do I know if it works? Because I need these measurable results. Do you have advice for somebody who’s thinking, I don’t know how I’d know if that works or not? Ways to track that or understand how that shows up?

Mark Woodward: The baseline is right now. Your baseline is right now. What are your current measurements right now on quality, safety, maintenance? What’s your shop dealing with? What does the torn up equipment look like? What about your customers? Are you tracking your customer complaints? Are you tracking quality issues, returns, right? You set your baseline and you look at yourself and you say, is what I’m doing actually making an impact on these things? It may not be, right?

So what we have to look at is, if you’re skeptical about this, if you have an issue, quality, maintenance, safety, production, if you have an issue, you have to try something. You have to get attention. Employees have to pay attention. How are you going to get their attention to make a change? Because what you’re doing right now may not be working, or it may not be enough. If an incident were to occur and they audited your training paperwork, you have to be able to show that you’re sending out safety messages and that your employees are seeing them and that you’re monitoring results.

And that’s the thing about training everybody seems to forget: your training has to have an impact. Like when I do a safety meeting, I’m going to go out and make sure that those things are being followed. You have to have monitoring, and you have to have corrective action. So you’re going to set baselines and you’re going to say, I think we need an improvement here and we need an improvement here, and we’re going to create different communication channels, different communication methods. We’re going to create a couple of videos, and we’re going to develop a standardized, maybe five bullet points, and that’s going to standardize it across the company. And we’re going to launch this thing. It could be a toolbox talk. It could be a short video. It could be a short learning management system module. I would venture to say that your employers are doing microlearning and they don’t realize it. They just need to take more advantage of it.

And I also have an opinion that we are all carrying around the most important, impactful tool mankind has ever had in the palm of their hands, and that’s a smartphone. You can take video all day long with your smartphone and clip it with your smartphone, and literally group text that video out to your employees right now. There’s no excuse to not do this. If I’m on a job site and I see something that needs attention, I’m going to take a quick video of it and I’m going to come back, or I may just text it out right there. Hey, this is what I’m seeing on the job site. Is this correct? We are not fully utilizing the technology that literally all of your employees are carrying around. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re taking advantage of the most important tool mankind has ever had in their hands, and we’re sending messages directly to the employees. And then when they watch them, I hope they like them and I hope it appeals to them. I hope they think, that’s pretty cool, and I hope they learn something. And then I measure it.

And then I go back out to the job site and I say, we’ve been doing this, talking about this for about three months, have we had any impact? And I go out and I measure that, right? So I think we just really have to take advantage of what people are using, where their interests are and how people are communicating. That’s their phone, that’s their smartphone.

Heather Carl: It makes perfect sense. And you’re really meeting people where they are, and then being able to measure those results based on how many injuries they’re having, how many near misses are you having, all those things. So it’s definitely measurable. And I like that you are experimenting with different ways to reach people, so it’s not just one channel, but lots of different things. And if I’m a business that maybe doesn’t have a huge safety team, obviously I’ve got a safety manual, I’ve got a handbook, I’ve got those things, and I know it’s important, but I don’t know where to start to build a microlearning culture or program at my company. I wondered if you could share what that looks like for somebody who really hasn’t dipped their toe in this before and would like to try it, but maybe doesn’t have a ton of resources readily available.

Mark Woodward: I was in the same boat. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I knew what needed to be done, but I thought, yeah, I’m not going to be the guy in front of the camera. And I was like that at MEM too, Heather. You guys would want to film something? I can’t, find somebody else. And you have to jump off. You have to start. You have to start somewhere.

What I encourage folks to do is take one topic and just try it. Is there a quality issue? Maybe not even a quality issue. Just something you want to see, or maybe you want to just say thank you to your employees. Something. Just start somewhere. Literally prop your phone up against a truck fender and take a video in your shop to say, appreciate what you guys do, appreciate what my team does, everybody in the office, you guys are the best. We’re out here to serve our customers. I can’t thank you enough, and we’re going to try to do more of this kind of thing, and I’m going to post these things on our internal page, or I’m going to email these to you guys. Let me know what you think. And send it. Start, just send it, people. I guarantee people are going to like it.

And then you could invite your subject matter experts in and say, what are five key quality points we need to make today? Or what are your top five safety issues that you see on a regular basis? Like when your MEM loss prevention consultant came in and they chatted with you about things like motor vehicle or slip trip fall or ladders, turn that information into a quick safety message. And then remember, when we talk about boiling it down to five points, simplified: we are making things way too difficult. What are the five most important things I need to remember to drive a work truck through St. Louis safely, right? Slow down. Wear your seatbelt. Stay off the phone. Drive at or below the speed limit. That’s your safety message, right? Very simple, so simple in nature. You need to try, and you can get some help if you have somebody there in the office that could help you. Get some help until you feel more comfortable doing it yourself.

I hopped out online and bought a 250 dollar mic set. And I’ve got a mic that I wear, pairs with my phone. I bought a tripod, 25 bucks, get a tripod. And then I take those clips. When I go out on the job sites, I take clips all day long. Then I use a program called Canva, and I splice those clips, and I can make a safety video or a video about production or quality. I’ve got it down to about 30 minutes where I can get a good video made. Then I take that video and I send it to our in-house experts. We have a marketing team here, and one of our marketing pros loves Canva videos and loves doing that, and he’ll take my video and make even more adjustments to it to make it better. And then we’ll download it as an MP4 and we’ll start shipping it out.

So you just have to start. I recommend you make it simple. I recommend you make it positive. I recommend you load it up with thank-yous, because you’ve got to realize, without your crews, none of this exists, right? So you always have to be very thankful. But you need to start, and then it’s going to take time. You have to be patient. We’re just starting a lot of this, but I am seeing traction, because people are talking about it in the field. I will have my phone out filming little clips or little parts of the machines running, and they’ll say, oh, another safety video, am I going to be in your next safety video? I think our crews get a kick out of it. So we’re starting to really put our foot on the throttle of more microlearning opportunities across more channels, and making those videos available to anybody who just wants to check them out.

Heather Carl: You can’t ask for better engagement than somebody saying, hey, am I going to be a part of the next video?

Mark Woodward: They do. And we have a topic in safety: inward and outward facing event recorder cameras. All of our fleet has had Verizon and Motive systems in our fleet for years now, and the value of that inward and outward facing camera is really amazing, because we have a lot of close calls. Our crews drive very safely, and I have proof. But we have motorists that cut us off, we have deer, all manner of close calls when we’re driving the fleet around. I take those videos, the outward facing video where you can see a deer run out in front of a truck, or maybe where a vehicle cuts our driver off or brake checks our driver, right? I take those and I splice those together and I put those in close call videos, and I send those out. The employees can learn from that. Be ready for these things to happen, like deer or a motorist that just randomly cuts you off, right? So it really helps promote safety messages.

And I can also take that same type of content and focus it. I can make a specific video and send it directly to employees, right? So I have eight VAC truck operators and eight VAC trucks. I can make a VAC truck safety video: five main points of safety for all VAC truck operators. I produce that video, it’s 30, 45 seconds, one minute in length, and I send it to my eight people. So there’s lots of different ways to get content, mix and match it, and make it to where people really actually want to watch this stuff.

Heather Carl: That’s extremely targeted, and that’s probably the key to really making yourself relevant to that person’s specific job and the risks that they face. And I know we have covered a ton today, but it’s all such good stuff and so interesting to hear a different perspective on learning. It’s just time for things to probably evolve to be more effective in today’s world with the way we consume information. And we always do like to leave everybody with one or two takeaways. I know it’s going to be hard to narrow it down, Mark, but do you think that you could maybe share the couple of most important things that you think we’ve talked about today?

Mark Woodward: Yeah, and once again, Heather, I really appreciate the opportunity to come back on the WorkSAFE Podcast. It’s very cool. MEM is in my blood, love y’all to death. I tell you, the main thing I want everybody to understand is have fun with this. Don’t look at this as a drag. Look at this as a way to engage your employees. Get the facts out there and teach them. Stop looking at training as a cost that just goes nowhere. This is an opportunity for you to communicate directly to their phone and get them the facts and help them do their job. So have fun with it.

The second main point I want to reiterate is boil it down to what folks need to know. The five points to do this job right. The five key critical quality points. And then once you set those points, that’s policy, and it creates a systemized way of doing the job. And I think the thing about microlearning and all this training is that we have to have the facts, how to do the job, and it forces us to analyze, right? So number one, have fun. Number two, boil it down and get people the information that they can learn from, right?

Heather Carl: I think those are great places to start for people that are new to this, and then also great reinforcement for those that have already been doing it for a while. And training doesn’t have to be longer to be better, and that’s something I’m taking away from this. Sometimes the most effective learning happens in focused, consistent moments that meet employees where they are and respect how they work. So the goal isn’t to cover everything at once, but to make sure the right things stick. And Mark, once again, thank you for helping us rethink how training can be delivered in ways that truly make a difference.

Mark Woodward: You’re welcome, Heather. Thank you.

Heather Carl: And for our listeners, take a look at how your current training approach fits the way your teams learn and operate. A few intentional adjustments, shorter, more frequent, more practical, could lead to stronger engagement, better retention, and a safer workplace overall. Thanks for tuning in to the WorkSAFE Podcast.

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