There are a lot of positive things happening with artificial intelligence (AI)—making it a good time for talent development (TD) professionals to explore the uses of AI for personalized learning, performance improvement, new employee onboarding, and more.

UMU Founder and CEO Dongshuo Li and ATD President and CEO Tony Bingham discussed the findings of ATD’s AI in Talent Development and Learning: Next Phases research report in a December 2023 webinar.

Survey respondents said that AI can have the greatest impact on personalized learning, measuring learning and organizational performance, and content curation.

“AI is one of the fastest technical implementations I’ve ever seen in my life,” Bingham said. “In 2022, we found that about a quarter of the organizations were using AI for personalized learning experiences and 45 percent planned on using it in the next couple of years.”

“It can analyze someone’s learning style and understand and then customize the content, change the difficulty to keep it interesting and challenging, and then track learning transfer,” Bingham added. “This is maximizing efficiency, effectiveness, and engagement of the learning and the learner, and it’s positively impacting the learner and ultimately getting results for the organization.”

Li agreed, adding, “When we talk about the personalized learning experience, it’s more about the content curation—to allocate the right content to the right people.”

Although personalized learning is where AI is often understood as having the greatest impact, Bingham and Li agreed that measuring the impact of learning and performance is an area where AI can make a positive difference for TD professionals.

“Measuring learning and performance to predict future outcomes is where organizations and TD professionals continue to struggle,” added Bingham. “Senior executives expect the TD field to be able to demonstrate the results of its work. Those results do not necessarily have to be tied to specific investments, but they must be aligned to what’s most critical to the organization. AI can definitely help in that area.”

Survey respondents were asked what areas can be improved with AI-enabled applications. Onboarding was at the top of the list, followed by product training, compliance training, leadership development, and sales enablement.

“In onboarding, AI can help fast start a new employee’s development,” Bingham said. “AI can help identify the connections that this employee needs to have and accelerate their ability to contribute by either introducing them or identifying those connections for them.”

Li added that AI can help measure improvements in ramp-up time for new employees. “There is fierce competition in all industries, so if organizations can shorten the ramp-up time for a new employee then they can help organizations find competitive advantage, which leads to success.”

Sales enablement is another area where AI is making huge strides. “UMU and ATD did a study on sales enablement in 2023, and the study found that half of sales organizations are using AI-enabled applications for training, mentoring, and coaching staff,” according to Bingham. “Sales is all about improving conversions—how do I identify the right prospect and then how do I convert them? AI is helping with that.”

ATD and UMU’s recent AI and TD research found that 58 percent of respondents are still learning about AI and do not fully understand it yet. Only 30 percent of TD departments have staff with AI experience, and 38 percent plan to hire or train staff in AI.

Both leaders encourage TD professionals to get early wins in their AI implementation.

“Incorporate AI into the areas where it will improve the business results directly so that you can build confidence in the use of AI,” Li explained. “AI is helpful in improving not only the efficiency of the workforce, but the happiness of the workforce, too.”

Bingham added, “This is change for an organization and change is hard. Expect that there’s going to be some resistance. But just because you are getting resistance, don’t stop. Show how AI can be used and helpful in augmenting work.”