Generative AI is not the next big thing, but rather the biggest thing. Businesses must ensure that their teams are comfortable and knowledgeable with this technology so that they can utilize it on a daily basis at work. Generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing, make AI available to everybody, not just people in the technology industry, as long as they have the space, time, and support to learn how to utilize them. Employees that have access to a progressive learning experience based on positive reinforcement learn more effectively, just as they would with any new skill set. This is especially true with disruptive and transformative technologies like generative AI. Whether you’ve already gone to market,

Udemy is uniquely positioned to assist customers with this transition because to our extensive course catalog in generative AI and related areas. Our content production and curation process moves at the speed of innovation, supported by the collaboration our customer success team provides to our corporate customers to help them achieve their organizational learning goals.

Design Learning for Progressive Skills Acquisition

Employees may struggle to learn a new skill set, particularly one based on cutting-edge technology. They may want support in approaching the issue and incorporating it into their daily lives. The best approach to overcome this hesitancy is to plan the learning process. Plan a series of team meetings or courses that gradually introduce new technology while building on abilities learned in previous sessions. Create an environment that encourages experimentation, allowing employees to try new ways of working and thinking without negatively impacting work performance. This reduces the stress and worry associated with performance, allowing employees to gain confidence in their new talents. Then, implement strategies to integrate the new tool and abilities into the workplace.

To help your team acquire these skills, try repurposing a portion of each team meeting to focus on learning. Next, assign asynchronous learning assignments to the subjects you’ve presented. You might use a learning program adapted to the needs of your team, like the one below.

Sample Learning Program

Prework: Enroll all team members in a structured learning course that covers the principles of using Generative AI. This will prepare them to attend the initial meeting. These Udemy courses may be beneficial. Meeting Number 1: Provide an introduction and overview of the tool, even if it is only a review of the prerequisites. Allow all attendees to participate in hands-on investigation after the demonstration, with some explicit prompts to lead their initial experimentation.

Assignment 1 (after Meeting 1): Participants will spend one day prior to the second meeting utilizing the Generative AI tool as much as possible at home and/or work. Request that they document how they attempted to use it and the outcomes of their efforts. Meeting 2: Conduct a team evaluation of the experiment results, including what worked and what didn’t. Based on those trials, discuss new areas where team members could use Generative AI in their jobs. Assignment 2: Following the second meeting, encourage team members to practice the specific applications that were addressed in the previous meeting. Ask them to identify what worked and what didn’t, as well as what needs to be changed to improve the AI’s performance.

Meeting 3: Discuss what the team members learned throughout the week. Then, as a group, debate the norms, guiding principles, or regulations governing the employment of Generative AI. Solicit input on areas where people require extra assistance or how they have discovered strategies to self-govern. Based on individual inputs, lead the team through the process of developing and recording group norms.

Assignment 3: In response to the synchronous chat above, request that the team collaborate asynchronously on three to five guiding principles for deploying Generative AI. Encourage them to hunt for others in the firm who are using this technology, understand what they are discovering about its use, and then incorporate that knowledge into these principles.

As you plan the optimal way for team learning, keep in mind the organizational norms and rules for using Generative AI while putting it into practice. AI tools bring unique threats to confidential and sensitive information, and they must be used appropriately. Whether you’re enabling a team or a company, we recommend consulting with your legal counsel for advice on how to appropriately protect your firm’s data. With a stepwise approach to acquiring Generative AI skills, your team will be well on their way to efficiently incorporating these talents into the flow of their work. They may see advantages such as increased productivity, the capacity to focus on more strategic tasks, and fresh insights. In the next part in the series, we will look at ways to promote the skills-learning process through effective change management in order to get improved learning outcomes.

Technical skills, like business skills, are rapidly evolving, having far-reaching consequences in the workplace. These talents, which assist organizations in powering AI breakthroughs, building cloud computing infrastructures, and generating relevant customer experiences from data, have a short lifespan of approximately 2.5 years, making staying current more vital than ever. The tremendous pace of industry change, combined with how rapidly skills become obsolete, is putting pressure on firms as they seek to remain competitive in an already challenging macroeconomic environment. In fact, an amazing 87% of CEOs recognize significant skill gaps in their organizations.

To meet these human demands, 98% of executives are implementing a skills-based organizational model that emphasizes continuous and agile employee skill development while prioritizing applicable job skills above academic qualifications alone. This approach enables management to have a full awareness of their employees’ skills, capabilities, and shortcomings. They can then offer ongoing learning opportunities to assist employees overcome skill gaps and demonstrate mastery by obtaining industry-recognized certifications and validated badges.

Udemy is developing a new Integrated Skills Framework to assist these firms in completing the shift to a skills-based organizational model and staying competitive with innovation. The framework also provides leaders with an easy method to comprehend the foundations of skills-based talent management, such as reviewing their company’s internal skills landscape, identifying important skill gaps, and assisting people in demonstrating their earned abilities. Udemy’s most recent product releases are centered on the last component of the framework. Why? According to business leaders, one of the most serious issues they face is the inability to assess and authenticate their employees’ knowledge of skills in accordance with industry norms and standards. This is where recognized skills validation, such as certifications and badges, come in.

With CEOs under pressure to future-proof their firms, traditional hiring approaches that prioritize degrees and job titles are insufficient to cover critical skills gaps. According to McKinsey, a skills-based approach to talent management enables firms to expand their pool of qualified new candidates while also deploying existing employees to projects that match their talents, thereby improving long-term retention. Employee abilities must be clearly validated by certifications and badging in order for skills-based internal personnel management to work.