Take the fear out of skills training…
How AI-supported learning platforms improve your employees’ skills
The pace of technological change and digital transformation has increased enormously. Continuous professional development for employees—and even entire companies—has now gone from being optional to mandatory. Especially for those of us who want to remain competitive and adapt to new trends. If you are afraid of training skills, you run the risk of losing out. Training requirements are evolving rapidly. Companies that do not adequately train and retrain their employees risk falling behind. They may lose valuable skilled workers and get into economic difficulties as a result.
HR managers play a central role in fostering a culture of continuous learning. They help employees at all levels acquire new skills. Up- and reskilling using AI-powered learning platforms is an innovative approach that enables HR teams to deliver targeted, personalized, and scalable training that improves the skills of their employees.
Learn more about the importance of skills and the five key approaches and measures you’ll need to use AI-supported systems for your strategic re- and upskilling.
What are skills anyway?
Skills are the abilities and competencies your employees possess that enable them to do their work effectively and contribute to the success of the company. In the context of personnel development, the aim is to continuously identify, develop and improve employees’ skills.
Effective personnel development not only supports your employees with their personal and professional development, but also increases the productivity, innovative strength, and competitiveness of your company as a whole.
Use these five approaches to foster and improve your employees’ skills with AI-supported learning platforms
Just as the world around us is changing, approaches to corporate training must also evolve. From static, often still analog training concepts to digital, agile and—above all—continuous training systems. The following five approaches show how modern AI-supported learning platforms can help you identify skill gaps and provide personalized learning experiences for your employees.
Establish a learning culture to facilitate continuous learning
Successful further training and requalification is best achieved within a positive learning culture, as this promotes growth, adaptability, and expertise within your company. Think of it as an ongoing, never-ending journey. The personnel development team plays a central role here. They track metrics on participation in learning activities and uncover bottlenecks.
AI-based systems adapt training content to each employee’s individual needs, ensuring that they are always given new impetuses to learn, and a variety of content to explore as their individual workload allows. Such systems are also able to create company-wide training profiles. They identify knowledge gaps that may hinder an individual’s next career steps and automatically suggest training courses to close them. This supports strategic and individual talent mobility and succession planning.
But AI not only enables you to create personalized learning paths and more efficient learning content designs. It also gives your employees the opportunity to determine their own training plans. They receive suggestions of compulsory and additional training content based on their own individual needs and those of the company. Ultimately, however, they are responsible for their own learning instead of having to passively work through the often generic training courses prescribed from above.
This cultural shift is invaluable as your employees strive for purpose, growth, and ownership. They are more likely to acquire lifelong learning habits if they become self-directed learners rather than merely attending prescribed training courses out of duty once a year.
Analyze the need for skills and re- and upskilling measures
Next, identify the knowledge gaps. Find out what skills your employees need to achieve the company’s goals. These then take top priority. Artificial intelligence can support you in this. The algorithms use a variety of datapoints to show where skill deficits currently exist or will arise in the near future.
For example, if you want to expand your digital product range or push forward with automation, AI-supported audits can preemptively identify the associated training requirements in the areas of software development, data analysis, machine learning, and creative design. If customer service is a weak point, on the other hand, retraining in the areas of written communication, emotional intelligence, storytelling, and the customer experience can be offered on an individual basis.
Learning for everyone! Create a broad range of training content!
In the past, learning opportunities have tended to be limited to specific roles such as managers, high potentials, and senior executives. However, in view of the widespread digital transformation and automation—which also has an impact on other employee roles—company-wide upskilling is now essential.
AI learning platforms enable you retrain your entire workforce quickly and cost-efficiently. They can even lower individual training costs.
These platforms reduce the need for in-person trainers by offering fast, learner-centered sessions. With AI learning platforms, you can provide consistent, internationalized content. Training is becoming more flexible and self-directed. Employees benefit from this as they are able to learn even in the midst of busy schedules and production calendars.
Offering extensive further training initiatives can often prove to be a challenge. Real-time benchmarking of skills, personalized learning paths, and easily consumable mobile learning units, however, make these projects possible. They enable employees outside of management levels to continuously develop their skills without significant obstacles. So you can prepare your workforce comprehensively for the challenges of the future.
Curate individual learning paths even more easily
Once the aforementioned skill gaps have been identified, the next milestone is to create learning paths. Adapt these to the needs of certain groups of employees or individual learners. Start by determining where your learners are and where you need them to be. AI-supported learning platforms evaluate your employees’ current levels of knowledge through interactive assessments. They can then suggest appropriate content sequences adapted to each employee’s strengths and weaknesses.
Example: A sales team member wants to improve his digital marketing skills. The AI system first assesses his skills in the areas of social media, email marketing, and SEO. It then suggests a personalized learning program to him. The scope and depth of the content is tailored to build on his current knowledge without over- or underchallenging him.
The learning paths created consist of bite-sized microlearning units full of multimedia elements such as presentations, videos, podcasts, games, online mentoring circles and more. All the employee’s senses are stimulated, engagement increases, and they recall the knowledge better over the long term. Your learners make progress in short 5-15 minute lessons. Instead of being absent for days on end, they learn in between their work tasks.
Once they have completed the content, your employees receive suggestions for new topics. In this way, they are constantly challenged and go on to make continuous progress. Not repeating knowledge you already have saves you valuable learning time.
Analyzing and optimizing the effectiveness of your training
As soon as your employees start AI-driven training, the technology records their participation, understanding, skill development, and any possible regression. This is done through interactive questions, knowledge tests, and workshops that simulate real-life scenarios, for example. You receive continuous feedback on their progress and challenges.
If a particular module repeatedly causes confusion for several groups of employees, the responsible content curators can mark it for revision. For example, human or AI-based mentors can step in to provide support with personal coaching if employees are unable to make progress with a new skill despite repeated attempts.
It is also possible to evaluate the long-term benefits of further training, sometimes referred to as the ‘return on education’. AI-supported learning platforms analyze how the skills acquired affect day-to-day working life. To do this, they compare key figures such as productivity, error rates, and customer satisfaction before and after employees participate in training measures. Based on this data, the AI adapts its recommendations to boost learning outcomes. This helps managers to make well-founded decisions as to which training programs to expand, fine-tune, or reduce.
The bottom line.
AI-supported LXPs such as EdCast are capable of transforming corporate training. They highlight exactly where knowledge gaps exist and guide employees through the right training sequences with the help of personalized development paths. Thanks to robust feedback loops, they optimize learning outcomes and facilitate continuous training for all employees. In so doing, they foster a self-directed learning culture in your company over the long term.
As platforms like EdCast become commonplace, HR managers have an invaluable opportunity to accelerate skills development through the use of AI. The ultimate competitive advantage lies with those companies that implement the most intelligent tools, and at the same time enable their employees to continuously shape their own training processes.
The result: Employees with distinct professional strengths, and who are intrinsically motivated to constantly expand on them, will be difficult for competitors to copy. If used wisely, AI-supported ecosystems offer a key strategy for companies to secure a lasting competitive advantage with a skilled, adaptable, and committed workforce.
If you would like to find out more about this important topic, please contact us…