Can Gen AI Solve the Organisational Learning Conundrum?

Over the past decade, I’ve run into two consistent pushbacks when it comes to people engaging in learning at work. Firstly, it’s difficult to find the time in the busyness of the day to day workload to step away for learning purposes. Secondly, organisational learning offerings, especially in the area of human skills and leadership development, are often perceived as too generic or disconnected from the participants day-to-day work.

Digital transformation of learning content design and delivery has been enabled by the ubiquity of production technology and algorithmic learning, borrowing from entertainment and social media content strategies. “Netflix of Learning” type offerings, while delivering enhanced accessibility to and personalisation of learning content have failed in their promise to embed a learning culture. At best, they have created a culture of content consumption, at worst, a culture of choice overload and learning paralysis.

In the organisational context, delivery of a return on learning investment is directly related to the successful transfer of that learning to the actual work context. In addition to ensuring that the learning is relevant and personalised, a quality learning intervention, especially in the
area of behaviour change needs to incorporate self-awareness, self-reflection, contextual learning, experimentation, and feedback loops. In other words, consuming learning content and actual learning are not the same thing.

It is in this space of creating quality learning opportunities that Gen AI has enormous potential. Its true value isn’t in generating more content, but in creating hyper-personalised and iterative learning experiences that directly address the issue of learning transfer. Here
are three examples of how it can be leveraged to do this.

1. Gen AI can ingest a learner’s specific role, current project, and company data to instantly generate highly relevant, situational practice scenarios. Instead of reading about management theory, a manager can practice responding to a challenging, AI-generated situation that perfectly mirrors a real world problem.

2. Gen AI can act as an always-on, non-judgemental coach to aid self-reflection. Learners can share details of recent decisions or interactions and prompt the AI to analyse them against best practices, identifying blind spots or suggesting alternative approaches. This immediate, private feedback loop is often the catalyst for behavioural change, delivering real learning impact

3. Gen AI-powered tools provide instant, targeted guidance exactly when it’s needed. An employee struggling to structure a difficult presentation can ask a natural language query related to their specific task, receiving personalised guidance and integrating learning seamlessly into their workflow.

You will notice that each of these examples still requires a time investment on the part of the learner. However, shifting the dominant paradigm from ‘time spent’ on learning to ‘time invested’ in learning will be made easier if learners and organisational sponsors see
evidence of learning transfer and return on investment.

Until the emergence of Gen AI, efforts to enhance personalisation, integrate learning into the flow of work, and deliver real learning impact have been stifled by the prohibitive cost in terms of time and budget of quality learning experiences. Could Gen AI offer an effective solution to foster a learning culture where people don’t just consume content at scale but really learn and transfer that learning to the workplace? It’s an exciting new frontier for organisational learning!

Author: Carol Mannion is founder of Carol Mannion Learning and co-founder of The Courage Project. She is a graduate of the MSc in Strategic Learning and Development at DCU.