How often have you heard phrases like these lately?
“People need to collaborate with technology.”
“We need to keep humans in the loop.”
“The key is identifying and training for the skills people need today—and tomorrow.”
Like any relationship, the one between technology and people is a balancing act. Too much technology and organizations risk overwhelming or burning out employees. Too little and they risk going the way of Kodak and Blockbuster.
Nearly 100 Learning and Development (L&D) professionals gathered to share their challenges, experiences, and best practices around both sides of this relationship during the Learning Leaders Summit sponsored by Adobe and held at MS2 Lake Nona Accelerator in February.
AI AND L&D
David Metcalf, director of Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab (METIL), UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training, kicked the event off with a glimpse into a mind-blowing array of emerging tech products that could revolutionize the way we live, work, and learn. These include everything from a smart home 3D food printer and the NOVAC Holographic Display Table for meetings and training to using AI to predict wildfire breakouts and Meshy.AI, which turns text and images into 3D models in minutes.
“With AI, there is something new that changes the way you work every few days,” Metcalf said. “It’s like when the Apple or Google App Store started.”
David Leaser, vice president of MyInnerGenius, concurred, pointing to the role AI can play in what he calls “shadow learning”—the internal learning you haven’t captured in your training. He noted that 86 percent of the American workforce learns on one platform: YouTube. “So let’s say you want to create a YouTube-curated playlist of videos, plus a syllabus, study guide, skills pad, and all of the meta data for a badge. To do that, you can create a prompt in ChatGPT, as well as use it to generate an assessment/ exam and give learners credit for this learning.”
For Adriana Lange, AVP of Learning & Development at Verizon, “AI in instructional design has been a game-changer for us, particularly in onboarding. We’ve also trained an AI coachbot to be the expert in role-plays. It gives the learner data, insights, etc., that they wouldn’t get with two people doing the role-play.” That said, she stressed, “AI does not take the place of instructional designers; it’s there to help them. The key is to implement technology because you have a business problem you need to solve.”
Cognitive neuroscientist Dominik Rus, global head of Learning Innovation and Technology at TTEC, battle-tests 20 new technologies/tools each month. “I tell people: ‘Show me how this platform makes learning stick.’ AI allows us to automate and scale. But the trap people fall into is they are automating learning that doesn’t work.”
He added that the L&D workforce also must be upskilled. “When using AI in learning design, you can build a learning journey in three minutes, but you have to add interleaving (mixing different types of content and reinforcement) and spaced retrieval (nudges to help learners remember content).”
His learners developed 27 prompts for instructional design, but he noted that he now needs “super-human” instructional designers who know how to look for errors in the training AI helps create.
THE CURRENCY OF WORK: SKILLS
Kason Morris, managing director, Future of Work and Skills Strategy at Merck, sees emerging technologies as a partner to help people go faster and unlock new capabilities, particularly when it comes to upskilling or reskilling. “We are moving from a job-centric model of work—where people fill roles—to a work-centric model—where skills are important and drive work outcomes,” he explained. “The currency of work is skills—both hard and soft, or durable and perishable, as I refer to them because, like groceries, skills can expire.”
For business outcomes, he noted, “you need to understand the skill capabilities you have today and those you will need tomorrow, and you need to look at skill adjacencies. For talent outcomes, you need personalized learning journeys to allow people to access growth opportunities. Technology can help ensure you have the right people in the right places.”
WELLNESS AND PEAK PERFORMANCE
Organizations also need to create an environment and culture that enables their people to grow and thrive. “If people don’t feel they matter, employee engagement surveys are useless,” declared Geoffrey Roche, North America director, Workforce Development at Siemens Healthineers. “Research shows that when there’s an increase in love and belonging, there’s a 56 percent increase in job performance and 50 percent decrease in turnover risk.”
Tom Van Raaphorst, head of Learning & Development at Amtrak agreed, noting how crucial it is for leaders—and all employees—to be accepting, joyful, patient, kind, humble, courageous, and trustworthy. “Be YOU,” he said. “And remember that you can be a leader without a title or a team.”
Added Taylor Williams, manager, Corporate Training at The Haskell Company, “We have to prepare our leaders to lead the way on well-being. High-performing people often don’t know how to ask for help and support. We think wellness is a threat to peak performance, that it will take away from results. But without wellness, there can’t be peak performance.”