Today’s workforce is finding itself entrenched in the fourth industrial revolution, which experts are stating is an “age of automation, connectivity, artificial intelligence and robotics [where] entire industries are vanishing, as new industries emerge and new careers with them.”
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Like it or not, it’s time to prepare your employees for the fourth industrial revolution, where automated technologies and artificial intelligence are becoming mainstream. Below is more information about what you can do to accomplish this as an L&D professional.
Evaluate Your Company’s Needs and Search for Technologies to Meet Those Needs
Long gone are the days when your organization needed to adapt to using technologies that don’t completely suit its specific needs because there weren’t many choices available. Now you should first determine what you want your organization to accomplish and then find a technology that will help you accomplish that.
For example, as an L&D professional, you can do things like use technology to determine where there are holes in your customer care responses and processes so that you can better train your staff to address those holes.
Or, you could use technology to figure out where your shipping methods are going awry inside shipment facilities so that you can better train staff to handle order fulfillments, and so on.
Monitor Emerging Technologies and Trends and Try Before You Buy
Because technology markets and software markets are quickly becoming saturated in the fourth industrial revolution, you’ll start to have more and more choices.
So, be sure to monitor markets for emerging L&D technologies and platforms that others have reported as being beneficial to their own organizations once they’ve built a notable reputation before they become too widely used, as this will help your organization maintain its competitive edge.
But be sure to try out any technology before you buy it and commit to it long term because technology that might work for another organization may not work well for your own.
Adopt an Ecosystem Mind-Set for Learning
In the fourth industrial revolution, it is imperative that your organization adopt an ecosystem mind-set for learning, where a culture of learning is adopted and where departments across an organization are using technology to deliberately work together on a continual basis, to mutually rely on one another, and to get outside of their departmental silos to get work done and propel their organizations forward.
Read “The Ecosystem Mind-Set and Why Your L&D Team Must Adopt One” for more details about why this is so important.
Create Customized Learning Content and Personalized Paths to Learning
Above all else, as an L&D professional, you should be relying on automated and advanced technology to ensure your learners have access to customized learning content and personalized paths to learning.
Each learner should receive content and learning opportunities that match their individual career aspirations, goals, and interests. Technology in the fourth revolution makes it so that there should no longer be much guesswork in which learner needs what and when he or she needs it. And it will empower employees to take charge of their own learning and development.
As you prepare your employees for the fourth industrial revolution, don’t forget to do the things listed above.