Companies are increasingly putting themselves in the shoes of their employees to develop strategies that would result in a more committed and productive workforce. Cultivating a learning culture can be a constructive step in this direction. Prioritizing learning with a significant focus on upskilling and reskilling is the need of the hour.
Transformation of a workplace culture into one that promotes continuous learning doesn’t happen overnight, but some steps can be taken to get started. To begin with, organizations should start focusing on delivering better learning experiences.
Unique learning experiences – The secret sauce
With a focus on making this cultural transformation successful, organizations are required to captivate learning into their core values and build a firm belief of leadership support among employees. The crucial part is to design a top-notch learning experience. It can be easily done by prioritizing the following key components.
- Make learner-centered strategies a priority
- Make learning available in the flow of work
- Include rewards as a key component
AI is everywhere, and it has a lot of potential in the L&D world. We discussed the significant role of AI in ‘making learning an everyday work’, in full detail in one of our previous blogs. In case you missed that one, read here.
AI bots for close interactions
For quite some time now, many companies have been using AI bots to provide cutting-edge digital customer interactions. According to research, consumer retail spending via chatbots is expected to reach $142 billion by 2024. Chatbots encourage engaging dialogues, and AI allows the bot to be responsive, agile, and adaptable. Chatbots that are more advanced learn from each conversation, identifying preferences and providing recommendations based on previous requests. Chatbots enable collaborative working practices by facilitating information exchange, makes learning an everyday part of the workflow, and providing a training experience that is similar to conversing with a colleague…a few of the many ways chatbots make meaningful interactions by providing efficient learning support.
Furthermore, AI-based bots can readily adjust to each person’s learning demands and help them attain a more meaningful learning experience.
However, every organization has its own distinct and structured work ecosystem, which cannot be denied. The integration of AI-coach into an existing workplace ecosystem is what the L&D leaders are concerned about.
Integrating AI in an existing workplace learning ecosystem
AI is increasingly being adopted and implemented into businesses of all sizes, to increase revenue, lower operational costs, engage with customers, and automate day-to-day tasks. HR professionals are using AI to speed up the sorting and filtering of resumes, onboarding candidates, creating new roles and altering organizational structures. Also, HR leaders need to respond with effective and adaptive learning and development programs that will not only help train people but also lead to measurable payoffs.
AI integration into the workplace is surely going to unravel unexpected benefits. Organizations can make AI integration successful by taking the following four areas into their consideration.
- Identifying the sweet spot inside an existing ecosystem where AI can be implemented. For instance, let us suppose a company adopts Microsoft Teams as a productivity tool. A layer of AI-enabled virtual coach could be introduced in the Microsoft Teams environment to assist the users.
- Delivering content at the point of need with the help of an AI-enabled virtual coach. For content to be AI-ready, it must be searchable, accessible, integration-friendly, and include meta tags for media material to facilitate access. When a learner seeks an answer to a question without going through the complete learning material, an AI-enabled virtual coach can provide an answer within a matter of a second.
- A virtual coach, by gauging numerous learner metrics and learning patterns, can measure the learning outcomes. The outcomes-based learning approach is an effective way to build specific competencies in a learner, to master several skills. This can increase employee motivation and can instill trust in employees.
- AI-powered chatbots can double employee engagement by helping organizations to stay connected with their employees through continuous feedback capture and handling various aspects of an employee’s learning lifecycle.
What is it about this coach that makes it so effective? Undoubtedly, the ability to deliver personalized learning experiences. The image below depicts a high-level workflow of a virtual coach in the flow of work.
(AI-enabled Virtual Coach Workflow)
Perhaps AI is on its way to becoming the next technological advancement, and this has already started. By combining big data and other machine learning technologies, AI-powered virtual coaches can bring a multitude of benefits to the table.
Proactive support to the learners, understanding learning preferences, and keeping learners up to date are some of the benefits of the AI-powered Virtual coach. It also generates an ecosystem of nudges to boost learning and supports ongoing performance management.
Organizations are moving from a culture of training to a culture of learning. Technology has an important role to play here and AI is on its way to becoming the next remarkable thing in L&D.
Are you planning to incorporate AI into your workplace to improve learning and development?
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