Learning & Development in the era of AI & Machine Learning: Why you need to adapt now or fail fast.

It’s time to face facts. The fourth industrial revolution, powered by AI and Machine learning, is going to revolutionise the world of work and increase productivity, but also replace millions of jobs. According to a report from PwC in 2017 30% of UK jobs are potentially under threat, while 38% of US jobs have a ‘high risk’ of being replaced by 2030. New types of jobs and skills are emerging as AI and digital transformation takes hold of more sectors and businesses. In the marketing agency world, it's already making strides into the performance business model and biting at the heels of the creative process itself.

There are two ways of looking at this. You could be out of a job or you need to adapt your skills to remain employable. As Charles Darwin wrote about all those years ago, successful species adapt to their environment in order to survive and thrive.

So how can we adapt our skills?

We need to embrace the lifelong learning of skills that can’t be mechanised (yet..), including how to use new complex AI technology to optimise our roles. Likewise, businesses need to embed a culture of continuous learning for their people in new skills, abilities and knowledge.

Learning new skills is high on the list of business leaders. The 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends report found that 90% of CEO’s believed their company faced digital disruption driven by technology and AI, and 70% say their business didn’t have the digital skills to adapt. This confirms how skills are becoming obsolete at an accelerated rate, highlighting why marketing professionals must now look to developing new skills over the next 12-18 months.

But I went to University?

Leaving College or University with a degree is not the end of your learning journey, and nor is taking the mandatory courses your line manager puts you on to learn about ‘presentation skills’.

Being able to access cutting edge digital learning content is increasingly important in the digital economy. Luckily, many new learning providers have emerged over the last decade to help businesses develop their workforce.

Marketing agencies are fast realising that their traditional training methods and processes are outdated. People want regular, easy access to bite-sized learning content at any time of day. To remain competitive, retain people and bring in new talent, businesses need to develop a culture of continuous learning and work with specialist platforms and providers that can help businesses facilitate this.

Providing people access to learning outside of job roles is important as static, traditional roles are fast becoming a thing of the past. Whilst we have to train our people with the skills they need in the world of work today, we also need to ensure our focus on transferable skills so they can adapt in the future.

So what does this mean for the role of the traditional HR department?

Developing a culture of continuous learning is essential, but will require a new set of skills and capabilities in HR. It’s no longer enough for them to have Trainers or traditional Learning and Development Departments. While 'training design' continues to play a role, we now need L&D to focus on 'experience design', 'design thinking', 'app and platform creation', 'content curation', the ability to create 'marketing communications & branding', and much more experimental, data-driven, solutions:

Source, Isobar

HR needs to think about the overall employee experience, rather than just injecting new, off-the-shelf training or leadership programmes into the business.

There is nothing more powerful than strategic learning initiatives bespoke to your business or even its clients. This can come in the form of selecting and curating courses from the people already working in the roles you want to be in, or are likely to need in the future. Learning should be driven by the business strategy not by HR functions working in silo.

At the moment, HR can still be seen as a cost centre. But with so much digital transformation underway, HR can play a leading role in helping enable and up-skill both our talent and client workforce. HR can help provide the right learning content to help this transformation, ensuring that it is accessible, digestible and always wrapped around their daily work.

Who is getting it right?

Let's face it, the traditional Learning Management System (LMS) is dead, with their static course catalogues, often HR-led content and built on technology designed from the CD-ROM days, RIP.

The best learning platforms operate are intelligent, user-centric systems that help people access lots of content that can be arranged into learning pathways and programmes on mobile. Companies like PluralSight, Udacity and Lynda.com offer integrated delivery systems with content from industry experts, community building, and remote mentoring. Many are now AI-driven and accept user generated, video and micro-learning content.

We also can’t forget that innovation in Virtual Reality technology has the opportunity to change learning experiences again. If the likes of Oculus and HoloLens can commercially move mainstream with their products, the possibility is huge in many sectors from educationto defense. For instance, language-learning app Mondly recently launched a VR based voice Chatbot language application to test learners through role-play based games.

What is micro and macro learning?

Micro-learning is content that can be quickly read, viewed and consumed in 30 minutes or less. It could be a video, an article, or a blog. People are information-seeking animals that consume this kind of material all day, and most of the new learning platforms offer learning in a massive, curated stream. Depending on what you follow, Twitter and YouTube can also be a great place for micro learning.

Macro-learning is something we do when we want to learn a whole new skill set. If you want to learn all about Design, SEO, Data Science or Cyber-Security, or a new UX discipline methodology, it takes time to learn the detail. This could be anything from one hour to one days’ worth of learning time.

What about the wider implications of AI on society?

As we move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world, people and businesses will need to adapt, evolve and learn new digital skills to develop and grow with it. But we also need a wider societal debate about the consequences of large scale AI deployment and must agree on a set of rules and frameworks that we, as a society, apply to AI.

Advanced digital learning and education on all levels, re-skilling the existing work force and developing an agreed plan to make sure increased productivity can be beneficial for business and society as a whole, will be crucial.

We have started to hear whispers of concern and restraint around ethics on AI from the new titans of industry like Facebook, Google and Tesla. However, I would argue that those developing this technology shouldn't necessarily be the ones driving self-regulation or regulatory frameworks, there should be bigger more united and impartial world power at play.

Unfortunately, if this doesn't happen soon I fear mankind may run the risk of becoming another Darwinian case study.

How is Isobar imbedding a culture of continuous learning?

We have developed a Digital Maturity Index to measure and analyse the needs and behaviours within our 85 offices worldwide. From a learning perspective this provides us with the data we need to develop the skills learning pathways we need to invest in. Then to embed a culture of continuous learning we built our own digital skills platform that provides free access to our 6,000 employees all over the world. Global skill leaders regularly update the platform with what inspires them along with curated content on everything from UX, Game Development, Chatbots, AI & Machine Learning, Technology, Design, VR selected from over 50 different software and digital learning platforms and sources. It gives our people the freedom to learn about many of the skills impacted by AI and that are driving digital transformation for our clients.

Source: Isobar Academy, VR Module

The move to businesses providing employees with a holistic experience has led to HR and Comms working increasingly closely together. With Isobar Academy, the HR and communications team partner to ensure the content is both educational and editorial in look and feel. Not only is the content highly relevant to the business, but it has been created by our people for our people. As a result, adoption rates have been high, with 78% of our people accessing it on a regular basis and 84% saying they learnt something new, employee engagement has also increased year on year.

Isobar Academy was recognised by the CIPD Awards, making the final for 'Best international HR initiative' in 2017.

Nick Bass is the Global HR & Development Director at Isobar, part of Dentsu Aegis Network

Twitter: @DigitalHRGeek