Artificial Intelligence: The Next Frontier in Employee Upskilling

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in – employee retention has been a hot topic (and a hot issue) across the board. The key to maintaining great talent? It’s providing them with opportunities to learn and advance in their roles. 

 

But we get it – a lack of time, resources, and know-how can make it difficult to upskill employees effectively. As a result, many workers wind up seeking new jobs, looking for a company that better prioritizes employee development programs.

 

So, how do you embrace employee upskilling without spending extra time or money that you don’t have? The answer might lie in artificial intelligence.

 

While most people know that technology has improved office productivity through automation, AI tools are capable of so much more. They have the capability to train and prepare workers for the jobs of tomorrow – and in turn, significantly boost employee retention.

In this article, we’re diving into exactly how artificial intelligence learning tools are paving the path for the next frontier in upskill training. Let’s take a look.

 

1. Create Exactly What Employees Need

 

AI can help trainers gather information about their learners’ performance, needs, interests, and preferences. This information can then help identify any skill gaps and assess whether an individual employee is ready for upskill training (or if they need to be reskilled). 

 

One of the biggest issues with instructional resources is that they can be unengaging – or downright tedious. Additionally, no two employees are alike; they all have different strengths, areas for improvement, professional aspirations, and learning styles. 

 

Data collected by AI can help influence decisions about which learning materials are best suited for each particular learner, creating more personalized and effective upskilling strategies.

 

Personalized learning pathways offer employees more than just an end goal – they also act as a step-by-step roadmap, outlining how they can grow and what skills they need to do so. 

The bottom line: as AI spares companies the task of identifying and resolving skill gaps at scale, it accelerates and streamlines the upskill training process for everyone else.

 

2. Address What Employees Want 

 

Maintaining audience interest and engagement is one of the predominant challenges in employee training. Sitting through an hour-long lecture can be grueling, especially if it isn’t interactive.

 

If you want your employees to retain the information, make the learning process enjoyable, engaging, and fun. How? Opt for microlearning training content, rather than hard-to-digest packets and videos. 

 

Microlearning is a novel approach to learning in which knowledge is imparted via small, bite-sized chunks for easy retention. It also tends to utilize engaging strategies such as gamification features, including quizzes and strategy challenges. 

What does AI have to do with microlearning? Well, microlearning is all about optimizing for a better learning experience – and artificial intelligence makes that easy by monitoring how employees respond to training. When AI can tell you what employees want, you can better meet their upskill training expectations.

 

3. Note and Remedy Skill Gaps

 

Every employee has a unique set of professional aspirations, career paths, and training needs – some of which they may not even be aware of just yet. AI can analyze employee information and existing educational programs to find the best possible training fit.

 

The more employees use an AI-empowered learning platform, the better the AI becomes at predicting what employees need and are interested in. It’s comparable to how social media algorithms provide relevant content based on what users like and interact with. AI can automatically enroll employees in appropriate courses, making upskilling faster and more efficient.

 

Some companies address a skills gap through external recruitment. However, it’s possible that HR professionals are overlooking existing employees who already possess the necessary skills. 

AI-provided data allows the hiring teams to quickly assess if a position can be filled from within or if they need to broaden their talent pool with external candidates. It also helps companies identify people who could benefit from reskilling and make recommendations for performance improvement.

 

4. Expand the Educational Content

 

It’s pointless to make content without knowing whether or not it is actually educational for the intended audience. You don’t want trainees clicking through videos as quickly as possible without truly learning anything.

 

Moreover, outdated lesson plans make it challenging to engage students. To maintain a stimulating employee training environment, you must be able to quickly generate fresh content. That’s where AI can help expand and improve educational content. 

 

AI tools automatically source new content from internal and external sources, allowing you to keep producing relevant material. Additionally, AI-powered microlearning solutions assess which types of content are most engaging, guiding you in the development of future content.

 

According to the World Economic Forum, machines will perform up to 50% of our work by 2025. Currently, machines perform about 30% of all tasks. As we move deeper into the AI age, it will be more important than ever to ensure that our workforce is adequately prepared (and skilled to retain their value). 

 

If there was ever a time to focus on broadening your employee’s educational experiences, it’s now.

 

Ready to Embrace AI in Employee Upskilling?

 

Investing in upskill training for our employees will help them adapt to the new ways of working while giving businesses a future-ready workforce as we enter the age of AI. 

 

However, it’s about more than just creating lesson plans and assessing their competencies. When we’re working at scale, AI helps make skill gap assessments easier, provides data to inform how we make our content, and matches employees’ needs to the appropriate courses. 

 

Any business that wants to succeed in the future needs to embrace AI as it supports and educates its workers. Not sure where to start? Let us show you. 

 

Our microlearning platform Code of Talent turns training into a fun experience by offering employees personalized learning paths, tracking engagement, and using AI to automatically upskill and reskill employees when appropriate. 

Want to see how it works? Explore Code of Talent with our interactive virtual tour. We’re ready to show you how artificial intelligence fits into your upskill training.