AI is augmenting, even pervading, so many jobs now, that company leaders face a “double” AI upskilling challenge.
Company leaders and workforces will not only need digital-AI skills to harness new AI tools. They will also need to balance them with human-social skills that ensures their organisation maintains strong social bonds to support collaborations and foster a sense of mission: in our research, 75% of learning professionals want to see more ‘human’ skills. Ensuring that workforces and teams have resilient social connections rooted in enhanced ‘human-social’ skills is essential for organisations to achieve system change or support their employees’ future wellbeing. This is because new AI tools will not only augment the ways we work but also automate entire workflows.
Learning obstacles
Senior executives will need strategic approaches to upskilling workforces for dual ‘digital-human’ skills requirements. However, research shows the obstacles: two-thirds of CEOs have yet to implement AI-related skills programmes while 60% of workers have noted accelerated change at work over the last year. Our survey of learning professionals reported renewed interest in face-to-face training and AI-enabled learning that supports ‘just-in-time’ learning, compared with e-learning that simply ‘pushes’ content through learning management systems (LMSs).
Separately, UK bosses told us that upskilling strategies are held back by inadequate resources, low engagement, and IT constraints. Employees’ learning preferences aren’t simple either: leading tech firms outrank learning providers as workers’ first port of call for ideas – well ahead of asking colleagues, management consultancies and HR experts.
Time for change
Given these conditions, L&D teams need to make profound learning changes to meet this looming skills requirement:
Building capacity
Change number one is about building learning capacity. Amid finite company learning budgets and workforce bandwidth, senior executives, HRs and learning managers need to identify their workforces’ skills needs and plan how they can be fulfilled. Can ‘dual’ AI-digital and human-social skills programmes be handled simultaneously or prioritised across operating divisions or business functions? Whatever the chosen route, leaders across organisations must collaborate on strategy: two thirds of UK HRs acknowledge that they work across business units to deliver company priorities.
Enjoying learning
L&D teams’ second task is to inspire deeper workforce commitment to learning. This means an enticing blend of face-to-face, online and professional network-driven approaches. With two thirds of workers feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change, the sense of novelty and time-efficiency from online learning alone has worn off.
Upskilling can also strengthen employer brands: in LinkedIn research, 70% of people say learning strengthens their connection with their organisation. L&D teams that enable learning in the flow of work, balancing on-demand learning and performance support with wider in-person, expert-led and peer connections, will inspire all their learners.
Learning momentum
The third requirement is for L&D teams to design more creative and exciting learning approaches to build organisation-wide momentum towards agreed training goals. AI’s game-changing workplace impacts can embolden L&D teams to pick the best tools to customise employees’ training and performance support materials. AI’s scalability will enable busy people to ‘pull’ learning and assets just in time while accessing corporate-level ‘push’ learning: such a tailored approach encourages profound behaviourial change and greater learner engagement.
Learning teams also need to devise attractive digital campaigns to ensure excitement among learner-colleagues and rivalry between learners, teams and peer groups. Such behavioural shifts will help ensure critical mass across organisations for new training ideas and learning habits that might otherwise appear difficult or unpalatable to risk-averse employees.
AI’s benefits
Change four involves companies adapting their learning strategies as AI augments or redefines their core processes. While many companies have primarily adopted AI to make efficiencies or drive productivity, our research found that six in ten L&D professionals are optimistic about AI’s benefits for learning. Early workplace studies suggest that AI may support better team collaborations and in-the-moment performance support, even as it redefines workflows.
Learners nevertheless want human connection and to learn from each other and their peers. AI will optimise these learning experiences, helping organise learning sessions, selecting cohorts of like-minded learners, and creating attractive blended experiences that operate successfully in the flow of work.
Permission
The fifth upskilling game-changer is for L&D teams to change their organisation’s learning culture. Learning professionals need to persuade company leaders to become learning ambassadors. Executives that demonstrate they are active learners, bringing new knowledge acquisition habits into working hours, will inspire junior colleagues to more regularly learn at work or try new approaches, irrespective of busy diaries. McKinsey found leaders engineering continuous learning at work boosted employee participation in development programmes by 55%.
AI era learning
L&D teams need to transform learning to meet digital-human skills demands. Professionals that can change learning cultures, communicate upskilling targets and use AI to personalise and upscale blends of face to face and ‘on-demand’ learning habits and job performance support, within fast-changing company workflows, will be well placed to achieve this demand.
