Do you have a goal? The AI will do the rest

AI-based training enables adaptive and personalized learning. For L&D professionals, the task of creating personalized training is a thing of the past. An AI-powered microlearning platform can create an online learning experience from start to finish, given a goal, target audience, and a few other details. Your task would then be to add “the sparkle” and customize it to your exact needs. This would make your job a lot easier.

For example, with Codeoftalent.com, you can begin by simply typing your goal: improving sales performance. Next, select your audience, such as “sales consultants” or “call center agents”, then choose your industry and the expected outcome, such as “achieving sales quotas.” Finally, let the AI work its magic.

The system automatically generates the structure of the topic, the gamified training journey, and required tests, all in bite-sized sessions, in a matter of minutes. Additionally, you can add images, videos, and other personalized elements of your choice to enhance the learning experience, or you can keep those added by our AI.

Therefore, AI plays an essential role in improving learning outcomes, increasing learner satisfaction, and enhancing the business mission for growth teams and productivity.

Provide feedback and evaluate easily

An essential component of microlearning assisted by AI is providing feedback and personalized support for learners. It offers trainers and business managers the means to evaluate and support employees every step of the way. It also helps participants learn from each other and share experiences. For example, participants or managers can share ideas, best practices, documents or guides with the team that provide examples on how to avoid mistakes in sales or dos and don’ts in workplace safety to prevent accidents.

This learning model is also equipped to assess the energy level of participants and monitor the progress of each learner.

Design your first training right now!

Training employees using a microlearning platform with AI capabilities for content authoring and customization is a means for companies to save time and money, but it is also an opportunity to streamline team growth.

If you want to maximize the benefits of AI in practice, it’s important for the organization you’re a part of to invest in understanding and adopting these technologies in various forms. Whether it’s onboarding, sales, soft skills, or compliance training, create the right training and help your employees become more efficient and happier in their roles.

Click here to try it now.

Almost unconsciously, most L&D managers center their learning programs around broader topics and general concepts, not specific business needs. This default approach overlooks the essential question of what the employees need to change and how. Specific business goals, concrete KPIs and clear competitiveness rationales need to be at the core of any training product, not an afterthought. 

What the conventional L&D paradigm got wrong

It is not a secret that corporate L&D involves a lot of work. In many companies, this is the department of one – often short on staff, and with a full plate of tasks to execute. But beyond the number of individual processes to complete, the underlying rationale of the type of product L&D teams need to deliver is quite straightforward – right? 

Got a new product to launch? Just design a training on sales. Planning a new hiring spree? You only need to prepare an updated onboarding program. The big picture of what a training is for should be reassuringly generic and straightforward. Well, not quite.

Since the advent of e-learning, the approach of the corporate L&D industry has been centered around a fairly topic-specific logic. The trainings offered are often seen like a digital, more visually pleasing version of a coursebook you’d get from a library section. You can learn about “sales”, or about “customer experience”. You can do a course on “conflict management” to foster a more collaborative culture in your teams. The list goes on.

The problem with this approach is that it often does not see the forest for the trees. A training that is anchored in general principles and does not focus on hyper-specific business needs is doomed to fall short of reaching its objectives. This is because the course design did not put its objectives front and center to begin with.

A shift in perspective is needed, away from courses informed by topic-specific questions and towards KPI-centric programs. 

A course should always be born out of a well-defined challenge that a business has. What do you want to change in your company? By how much? Until when? The answer of what needs to be learnt lies hidden in plain sight in these questions – and the KPIs that will measure your success too. 

Fight learning fatigue with hyper-relevant programs

Employees at all levels stand to benefit from a change in approach. Putting KPIs and key business objectives at the heart of each course will bring more clarity to everyone. At the same time, they will give employees the reassurance that everything studied, and every bit of effort dedicated is a clear step towards more efficient work and better results. 

Nobody is inherently lazy or unmotivated. But not having a sense of direction and carrying out tasks without a crystal-clear purpose can severely hamper the enthusiasm of your workforce. After all, how can you be committed to a course or any other work responsibility if you can’t tell for sure how it benefits you and the company?

A meta-analysis published in Organizational Psychology Review (2021; Gagne et al.) has shown that intrinsic motivation is by far the type of motivation most strongly associated with positive work outcomes. This means putting in effort at work out of enjoyment and interest, rather than being motivated by other sources, such as reward and punishment methods.

Knowing exactly what a course brings, what is the need that it serves and how it will benefit you as an employee is key in fostering intrinsic motivation. If clear business needs are not central to your L&D programs, the employees will quickly lose interest, and completing these trainings will become just another box-ticking exercise. Your workers do not want “another sales training”, or “another emotional intelligence training” that does not sound much different from the ones they’ve seen in the past. 

Incorporating specific KPIs at the core of the curriculum will help everyone be motivated and keep the eye on the ball at every stage. Suddenly, the objective of the entire program will look more tangible and achievable.  

KPI-centric courses in practice

What does a training that is connected to real business needs look like?

Let’s take sales for example. What would the traditional e-learning approach suggest? If you are launching a new product, or want to improve sales, you may think about designing a program tackling this topic. This may start off with some general principles, present the new product, explain how it is uniquely positioned in the market, and highlight some key sales approaches to apply in the case of this product. It all seems very sound and reasonable. 

However, there is every chance that this kind of program will include enough duplication to make your employees lose interest. Besides this, it is probable that it will overlook adding any specific metrics on what sales success looks like. General principles and good practice all sound very good – but how can your employees, or even your managers know what a successful implementation looks like? How can you check what works best when there is no discussion on measurements?

Conventional wisdom in education states that learning should start from general principles, and gradually get into more specific, specialized details. But in corporate L&D, this method is rarely optimal, because your employees have probably been taught general principles in the past and are processing large amounts of information as part of their day-to-day work. 

The opposite approach should be taken: every course should be anchored in hyper-specific business goals. What are your key sales KPIs? Do you want to increase your business’ visitors to leads conversion rate? What rate would be an ambitious yet realistic target in the short or medium-term? Is it 10%? Or is it 20%?

These are the questions that need to become the bedrock of any employee training program. Once the goal is set, everything can be put into motion with a renewed sense of purpose and direction. 

Examples can be found in any topic once you look to flip this question. A course on customer experience is no longer just a course describing different steps to make a client happy. The KPI-centric approach will first define what a happy customer looks like, how they behave, and how to measure this behavior. All of a sudden, this hypothetical course is no longer generic – it is about how to increase the net promoter score of your company by a quarter over the next six months. This requires clear steps that will lead to clear, measurable results. The employees will know what success looks like, and so will their managers. 

L&D platforms are already moving in this direction

Changes that have occurred in the past years in the offerings of various L&D platforms facilitate the shift towards KPI-driven programs. 

The switch from clunky and static e-learning courses towards microlearning platforms has laid a great foundation for more relevant corporate trainings that are centered on clear KPIs. This format allows to pass on information in a concise, structured way that focuses on essentials and actionable insights. 

Recent developments in artificial intelligence have extended into tailored applications for L&D. AI-driven microlearning platforms offer significant productivity gains, by designing courses in minutes starting from answers to key questions. This allows L&D professionals to explore different training designs with minimal effort and deliver new relevant courses faster than ever before. This allows them to input the very latest information with ease, making the process of updating their programs less expensive and more efficient.

At Code of Talent, we have taken AI-driven microlearning to the next step. Our new AI-driven service can now input your ultimate training goals as the basis of your L&D programs. This will align your trainings with your core business needs, making sure that every information passed on remains hyper-relevant.  You can try this solution for yourself here, for free. With this new feature, hyper-relevant courses centered around your core business priorities lay only a few prompts away. 

High turnover rates are being recorded across North American and European markets, adding substantial costs to businesses in many sectors.  This issue is here to stay, since it is primarily underpinned by structural, demographic factors. 

Nowadays, employees are showing more willingness to change jobs than they used to. This can happen for career advancement and remuneration purposes, or simply due to the pursuit of a more positive working experience. In these circumstances, it is fundamental that companies can help their workers perform at their best and feel welcome from day one. 

An excellent onboarding experience is more important than ever. This will not only boost employee experience, but it will ensure that you are able to get the most out of your employees, while you’ve still got them. 

Turnover is high and will likely stay high

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, turnover rates are higher in areas where unemployment is lowest. There is a simple explanation for this: when demand outstrips supply, the cost of what is in demand rises. When there are jobs to be filled but not that many people in the workforce to fill them, employees have the upper hand. That means that they are more prone to switch to jobs, as they have a broader choice.

The post-pandemic unemployment levels have been at near historic lows for a while in both North American and European markets. At the same time, turnover rates remain very high, and people are changing jobs frequently. According to the Work Institute, voluntary US turnover rates more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. Even though the latest 2023 report indicates a slight decline in figures, the rates remain at historically high levels. 

Among many causes, demographics are a core structural factor for this. European and North American societies are aging, and the working-age population is slowly shrinking.  With demographic trends working against you, it is paramount that you can train your employees quickly. This will allow your business to get the most out of their skills and abilities before they decide to make a switch for other companies or even a different career altogether. In an age when the timespan spent by employees in a company is decreasing, it is essential that they are trained to make a difference from their first week in the role and bring their best contribution while they are still there.

Some sectors are especially hard hit – and exposed to higher costs

To make things worse, some industries are disproportionately affected by these trends. In leisure and hospitality, turnover rates stand at a staggering 82%, while in business services they are at 63%. Both industries require in their own ways extensive training of their workforce, making the importance of effective and high-quality onboarding even greater – and the cost of each voluntary turnover even bigger.

The price of employees leaving can be eye-watering across most industries. And it is likely higher in the ones relying on extensive training. Research from the Society of Human Resources Management indicates that it will cost a company six to nine months of an employee’s salary to identify and onboard a replacement. 

It is paramount that employees are trained to hit the ground running

If your industry is affected by high turnover, it is absolutely essential that your employees hit the ground running as soon as they start and that they have adequate training allowing them to perform at top capacity.

A successful onboarding program would ensure that your new employees assimilate all the necessary information in the shortest possible time, while avoiding overwhelming them. 

The positive effects of a good onboarding strategy are two-fold. Firstly, your company could get the most value from its employees before they might leave in the not-so-distant future. In industries with high employee turnover rates, it is only a matter of time until the revolving door will turn. It is simply too expensive to be in a position where employees reach their top productivity only months before leaving for a different organization. Onboarding needs to be optimized to ensure that they are in a position to perform well as soon as possible.

Secondly, it is known that high-quality training and onboarding significantly improves employee experience and can push down the turnover rate. By making your new joiners feel welcome, adequately trained and meaningfully involved in all the relevant work from the very first week, it is likely that their level of satisfaction will remain at high levels, and in turn reduce the overall turnover of your company.

This is backed by data. Research by Brandon Hall Group found that organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent and productivity by over 70 percent. 

AI will help – but you also need a change in approach

Onboarding programs must deliver a full plate. This involves everything from company policies, procedures, and culture norms to specific job responsibilities, tools, and workflows in a way that is practical and centered on the day-to-day work. 

Artificial intelligence can serve as a valuable ally in various tasks, enhancing the efficiency of content authoring, translations, contextualized suggestions, grading, and learning analytics. It provides substantial value by delivering results swiftly and effectively, optimizing the use of limited time and resources. 

Furthermore, this technology facilitates continuous enhancement in content and delivery, surpassing previous levels of ease. Simultaneously, it seamlessly integrates features that foster collaboration among learners, encouraging interactions with corporate trainers and team leaders. This not only ensures the transfer of essential information but also evaluates comprehension while cultivating stronger bonds within the team. As a result, participants feel a greater sense of inclusion and readiness to embark on their roles within your organization.

Last but not least, a shift from big blocks of knowledge to bite-sized microlearning programs is also necessary to make the large quantities of information feel less overwhelming. New joiners need to quickly assimilate a lot of information related to many different topics. Breaking this down and structuring the knowledge base would facilitate a positive learning experience.

Time is of the essence

According to a study by ServiceNow, after the high levels on the first day, employee enthusiasm dips by around 22% after the first few weeks. It is not hard to imagine that these numbers are even larger in companies where the onboarding experience is especially poor.

It is a reality that nowadays, employees are more prone to switch jobs than in the past. Whether or not the causes of elevated employee turnover are related to the employee experience in a particular company, or to wider sector or labor market factors, it is essential that companies provide an excellent onboarding experience from day 1. Today’s employees need to be trained effectively and quickly – both because this could boost their job satisfaction levels, as well as to ensure that your company puts them in a position to perform at the top of their potential before they decide to switch – whether sooner or later. 

A combination of AI-generated programs and a microlearning-centric approach can offer the magical solution that can crack this problem. Training programs need to be concise, bite-sized, and hyper relevant. This can ensure that all relevant information is passed on and that the new employees receive it in full focus. Beyond these, the social, interactive aspects of some new microlearning platforms can have a two-fold positive effect, by allowing new joiners to both learn from the rest of the participants as well as build bonds with each other and foster a sense of community that is so essential for positive employee experience. 

Why not get a taste of the future?

Our award-winning microlearning platform, Code of Talent, has the ambition to make L&D programs fit for the future. You will be able to test-drive an AI-powered microlearning solution designed to easily create personalized training focused on acquiring and applying new knowledge and skills. Performance measurement is a key component of our vision.  

You can try it now for free by clicking here.

Staff shortfalls are one of the most frequently raised challenges across all companies, big and small. Statista reports that the typical ratio between the number of employees and learning and development staff in workplaces worldwide is 330 to 1. This problem is seen as being so chronic and entrenched in areas like HR or L&D, that the term “department of one” has often been assigned to these business functions. Many times, very few people, or indeed sometimes only a single individual manage entire processes by themselves, spinning multiple plates at a time. 

In this case, it is no wonder that even the most capable and motivated employees can get overwhelmed. They need to undertake long-term strategic planning, design courses and evaluate their results. Beyond this, they also have to maintain regular communications with other departments while still having to complete tedious administrative tasks.

A quick fix would be to simply hire more people. However, the cost often forces managers to delay doing so for as long as possible to avoid spiraling expenses. 

In the near future however, this difficult trade-off is set to become a thing of the past. With the development of agile, reliable generative AI solutions that can take over many of the recurrent administrative and execution tasks, L&D employees can now focus more on the most rewarding parts of their roles, and truly get the chance to make the most of their creative and problem-solving abilities. 

A study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows that 55% of workers say they need more training to perform their job more effectively. 

According to a different survey by the SHRM, this sentiment is shared even by the new generation of employees, with 34% of gen Z members surveyed sharing that they do not think they could use their existing skill set at work. The cohort also indicated that they want to work at organizations where they can develop their abilities.

AI innovations are set to shake up the way L&D works. 

As the knowledge that employees need to possess gets updated more frequently than ever, there is an accelerating need that the tools used to deliver L&D programs are renewed as well. Virtually all business areas face tough competition and profit margins are getting squeezed. Any significant recruitment drive in L&D carries substantial costs that many companies cannot afford. It is therefore clear that every aspect of the work carried by L&D professionals needs a rethink.

But how could anybody in these overworked teams have the capacity to design a major overhaul of their procedures on top of their existing responsibilities? Fortunately, developments in artificial intelligence can provide the catch-22 solution that these departments are seeking.

In 2023, Generative AI platforms took the world by storm, demonstrating to everyone just how extensive the applications of the technology can be. Even though millions marveled at the astonishing productivity-enhancing potential of these platforms, many businesses are still yet to adopt them at scale in many of their functions. 

So far, HR and L&D have been among the laggards in this respect. According to a recent Gartner study, only 4% of AI investments across all business functions is directed towards HR processes. This is significantly behind areas like software development (21%), marketing (19%), or customer service (16%).

However, tailored AI solutions for L&D platforms are already available – and it is a matter of months until these will be adopted at scale by businesses, whether medium or large, in order to take administrative and execution burdens off their employees’ shoulders. 

Existing AI-generated microlearning platforms are perfectly capable to simply take documents that need to make the content basis of an employee training program and quickly transform them into gamified, employee-centric microlearning courses that break down effectively all the knowledge that needs to be passed on. 

The wide-scale adoption of generative AI microlearning platforms will offload many of the L&D execution tasks. Everything from content development and content delivery to attendance and performance tracking and evaluation will be affected by it. Automating these responsibilities will redirect the focus of L&D professionals towards the more strategic duties of their roles, allowing them to make the most of their best creative and problem-solving abilities. 

In summary

Developments in Artificial Intelligence are rightly pitched as a once-in-a-generation technological leap forward. The potential for generative AI microlearning platforms to revolutionize the entire L&D checklist is evident: from content delivery to learner feedback and from data-driven insight analysis to personalized learning, almost all areas of L&D will be affected by change.

One of the main promises of AI solutions is that they will take on most of the repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on the big picture – and on tackling the bigger issues. Among all units, the often-overlooked L&D departments of one are set to benefit the most from this. 

Why not get a taste of the future?

Our award-winning microlearning platform, Code of Talent, has the ambition to make L&D programs fit for the future. You will be able to test-drive an AI-powered microlearning solution designed to easily create personalized training focused on acquiring and applying new knowledge and skills. Performance measurement is a key component of our vision.  

You can try it now for free by clicking here.

For both managers and their teams, the pace of change has felt overwhelming in 2023. Developments in AI have dominated headlines and captured businesses’ imagination with their promise of unprecedented productivity gains and disruptive potential. But beyond the AI revolution, shifts in employee behavior and expectations have also continued to shape the effectiveness of corporate L&D programs. 

Identifying how the L&D practices are set to evolve will be crucial in staying ahead of the curve and ensuring that your employees reach their full potential. 

“Change” is likely to show up more in L&D strategy headlines

As organizations grapple with the challenges of a rapidly evolving business environment, L&D departments are stepping up to the plate, embracing new technologies, and reimagining their approach to training and development. The story of strategic change is one of innovation, collaboration, and a renewed focus on the needs of the modern workforce.

Rapid industry-shaping changes will compel a shift from generic and clunky e-learning courses to personalized, agile, bite-sized microlearning experiences focused on real-life skill development and job-related goals. The very approach towards L&D will evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities brought by the increasingly volatile market environment. 

A recent report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) revealed that recruitment, mobility, and turnover continue to be echoed by learning practitioners as key workforce priorities. 

The post-pandemic Great Resignation has exposed the shifting expectations of employees. They  are demanding more and more from their companies in terms of skills development, work satisfaction and career prospects. 

These demands are not going to recede, especially as the pace of change brought by technological disruptions is  accelerating. Unsurprisingly, in 2023, the top concern of L&D professionals consulted by the CIPD was addressing the skills gap.

Preparing for takeoff: Generative AI will become embedded in L&D

If 2023 was the year when generative AI burst in the public consciousness and its enormous potential became clear to everyone, 2024 is set to be the year in which concrete applications of AI innovations will come of age.

Polls carried out by Gartner across 2023 showed a major increase in organizations piloting generative AI. In a report published in October, Gartner showed that 45% of the 1400 companies surveyed were in piloting mode with generative AI. This is up from only 15% in March the same year. 

Until recently, businesses used AI in L&D and broader HR processes in predominantly experimental fashion. However, focused adoption is expected to gather pace in 2024. According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, AI “high performers”, or companies where respondents said that at least 20 percent of EBIT in 2022 was attributable to AI use, were employing AI more often for uses within HR such as performance management.

Generative AI offers unprecedented innovations in virtually every area of L&D. This ranges from relevant, articulate content generation at a snap of a finger to precision learning and evaluation. Got a new product launch in 2 weeks? AI could design an interactive microlearning program for your sales teams in seconds.. Need to teach updated health and safety protocols to employees? AI can lay out all the key changes in approachable, bite-sized courses generated in less than a minute. 

HR executives are increasingly realizing the enormous potential of generative AI applications. These are here to stay, and not adopting these solutions in Learning and Development processes from curriculum design to skills assessment will mean falling behind in the race towards enhanced productivity and competitiveness. 

Learning to measure L&D in terms of value and impact

For many companies, corporate training and development represents the second-largest staff expense after employee payroll. With the advancement of analytics and increasing business pressure, more and more HR and L&D managers are recognizing the need to integrate business evaluation measurements into their L&D programs, placing knowledge application at the core of courses offered to their teams. 

In time, it will become indispensable to incorporate the evaluation of business results and behavioral change into every L&D process. This will be essential in making sure that the trainings offered remain fit for purpose, and that the company remains competitive.

Learning and Development programs have been known to be extremely expensive and to generate poor return on investments for the firms initiating them. Even though L&D practitioners state that they are concerned about measuring the impact of learning, only 50% of respondents agree that they have a process in place for assessing learning impact (CIPD).

Business leaders will continue to seek to make their expensive L&D programs more cost-effective and fit for purpose.Evaluating what works and what doesn’t will be a central element in this. However, the traditional disjointed view towards trainings and knowledge evaluation as two distinct processes continues to hamper such efforts. Fortunately, there is a noticeable shift in approach, with gamified assessments being increasingly integrated at the core of L&D programs and offering valuable performance data to HR managers. 

Keeping the eye on the ball

In a world of constant change, boiling down the multiple challenges to their most essential components will be key in keeping a focused and adaptable strategy. Admitting that change is a constant is a first step – this needs to be reflected in all approaches towards L&D processes: everything is changing, and everything is changing fast. All tasks in the L&D checklist will need to become more agile to allow for timely readjustments. Thankfully, a second core 2024 trend will come to rescue: the widespread adoption of generative AI platforms will scale up the ability of L&D departments to design and deliver training programs. Lastly, in all this, evaluation will be key: AI models will both encourage and enable a clearer understanding of employees’ needs and performance, and in turn a delivery of more targeted and effective programs.

Why not get a taste of the future?

Our award-winning microlearning platform, Code of Talent, has the ambition to make L&D programs fit for the future. You will be able to test-drive an AI-powered microlearning solution designed to easily create personalized training focused on acquiring and applying new knowledge and skills. Performance measurement is a key component of our vision.  

You can try it now for free by clicking here.