In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, generative AI is at the forefront of transforming corporate learning and development. Why? Because generative AI, a cutting-edge subset of artificial intelligence, holds the promise of revolutionizing how employees learn, adapt and excel in their roles. As businesses and people leaders strive to keep pace with these advancements, the conventional approach to learning and skill acquisition is poised to evolve into a more dynamic, personalized, and efficient experience.
Generative AI is more than just the latest technology buzzword, it has the potential to impact nearly every facet of your business and using it in corporate learning will become an essential part of preparing your workforce for the future. The journey toward generative AI-enhances learning has just begun, and how organizations approach its integration will influence the overall success of adoption. Fortunately, L&D teams are in an optimal position within organizations to be both pioneers in generative AI adoption and to lead by example, helping to strategize the business’ holistic generative AI strategy. While the process of implementing generative AI may appear daunting, there are a few practical ways to start the integration process.
The what: Reinvent the ADDIE model and means of measuring
With generative AI, organizations can streamline, automate and enhance their company’s learning function. Part of this process includes creating a new framework to identify generative AI opportunities and use of tools to create a tailored, transparent and scalable approach by reinventing the ADDIE model. While there are many approaches and methods to producing quality instruction, the ADDIE model is fairly universal and a great model to consider for current processes that may need to shift or be reimagined. For example, many generative AI tools will be great research partners to help you analyze a business problem or model potential solutions.
Related, if you tend to have several back-and-forth or iterative validation meetings with subject-matter-experts in your business, having better verified outlines or scripts will save you time—both for your team and ideally strengthen your SME relationships. You’re probably aware of the increasing list of content generation tools (e.g. imagery, videos and assembly) that will affect the development process. By integrating generative AI tools into this example ADDIE process, it will allow you to better understand what is working, what is not and where to consider changes in your investment decisions.
Here is a model to consider:
| Traditional | How generative AI enhanced ADDIE |
| Analyze | Generative AI tools can assist in data collection, analysis and provide insights from diverse sources.They can process large volumes of data, conduct automated content analysis and extract valuable information.These tools can offer personalized insights, identify patterns and suggest adaptive learning pathways based on learner data. |
| Design | Provide access to a vast repository of knowledge and resources for instructional design.They can assist in generating content outlines, refining ideas and exploring different instructional strategies.Generative AI tools can support the creation of interactive multimedia content, simulations or virtual reality experiences. |
| Develop | Streamline content development processes by assisting in content creation, editing and localization.Tools can help ensure coherence, grammar, clarity and consistency in instructional materials.Also aids in the development of multilingual or culturally sensitive content and provides translation or adaptation assistance. |
| Implement | Generative AI can serve as virtual tutors or mentors, providing real-time guidance and support to learners.They engage in interactive conversations, ask questions, provide explanations and offer personalized feedback.Tools can adapt their language and responses based on learners’ proficiency, learning style or individual progress. |
| Measure | Many new tools can contribute to evaluating learning outcomes and providing automated assessments.They analyze and interpret learner responses, essays or open-ended questions, providing instant feedback or scoring.Generative AI approaches can facilitate sentiment analysis or sentiment-based feedback generation, tracking learners’ attitudes and engagement. |
The who: Start building your team’s generative AI skills ASAP
Since L&D team will be at the forefront of generative AI adoption, providing your team with the right learning content to build generative AI-related skills will be imperative. Whether it is new skills such as prompt engineering or curation, learning leaders need to be well equipped with the skills of the future.
As these skills are developed, your L&D team will have the expertise to gather requirements, design course outlines, and develop new and creative ways of production. They will be able to better inform, train and create generative AI skills development processes across the business. L&D team will become the de facto generative AI expert and will be a beacon for navigating this new innovation terrain.
New skills that will be required include:
- AI literacy
- Prompting
- Data analysis
- Adaptive learning design
- Content curation and creation
- Ethical considerations
- Emotional intelligence
- Collaboration with AI
- Critical thinking
- Continuous learning
- Innovation and creativity
- Technical proficiency
- User-centered design
The how: Create an operating system team to oversee generative AI adoption
Ethan Mollick at Wharton School of Business has shared several examples of how AI will change education and corporate learning, and how AI is a lot more inventive or creative than assumed (certainly a different form of bias). More broadly, there’s increasing evidence that AI has a measurable effect on workers’ productivity, and directionally the benefits are growing.
So how will this all work together—not only within your own L&D, talent and HR teams, but across the entire company? The learning function has a key role in not only growing new AI skills for employees, but in showcasing best practices in new forms of creation, curation and curiosity, and ultimately becoming a new exemplar or beacon for the entire enterprise.
An example I’d propose is to recreate the method or process many tech companies use when deploying new applications or business approaches yet guiding these deployments with scale and efficiency mixed with a bit of governance and responsibility. Similar to how the Apple OS or Android ecosystems support the creation of varied apps on top of a foundation or operating system that incorporates baseline standards and code, a generative AI operating system team would provide centralized services around:
- Governed approach to bias, ethics, legal, copyright, ESG and public policies.
- Support and consultation to internal teams experimenting with generative AI.
- AI for learning portfolio management; i.e. keeping track.
- Cross-functional governance.
- Unified communications, branding, PR.
- Enterprisewide AI education and specialized development for high-stakes such as engineering, legal, sale, marketing, etc.
- Supporting digital employee experience and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives.
- Change management and documentation.
With a centralized, cross-functional AI or generative AI OS team overseeing the adoption and integration of AI into work processes across the business, and given both the hype and acceleration around AI approaches, this team will also have the primary accountability to stay current, and responsible. It’s an essential role that L&D can play for the greater good of the business.
By leading and centralizing your organization’s adoption of generative AI within your L&D team, you will have better control for removing bias, mitigating hallucinations and increasing efficiency and critical thinking. As generative AI quickly ramps up, it’s imperative you and your team start taking steps to manage this exciting and evolving frontier.
As L&D once fought for a seat-at-the-table, we are now the Table, or at a minimum providing new forms of strength, capability and creativity. This is our time!
