AI can improve the employee experience—if HR uses L&D strategically

Employees aren’t doing well.

Engagement is down, burnout is up, and that’s before you throw AI uncertainty into the mix.

From increasing data literacy to investing in personalized learning and development (L&D) opportunities, workforce leaders at an October HR Brew event shared how people pros can help manage AI’s impact on the employee experience.

“You got to meet people where they are,” said Lucrecia Borgonovo, chief talent and organizational effectiveness officer at Mastercard. “How do you really make sure that you’re giving people that sense of comfort and confidence to use AI responsibly in the flow of work?”

There’s no AI without employees. HR leaders should be involved in their company’s AI journey from the start, said Kim Morick, global HR technology offering leader at IBM. From there, she said, the entire workforce should be involved in building and experimenting with AI.

“Getting them involved in the process, excited about the process, innovating on the process, flipping the process on its head,” Morick said, is key. “It’s a creative project, so you have to involve them in the process. They need to understand what AI can do.”

Employees may be skeptical of or confused by AI, so Morick recommended encouraging them to embrace a forward-thinking mindset. “Continually getting them to think about what is next, and if you get excited about what is next, then you’re not going to be afraid about staying in the past,” she added.

Transparency around how AI may impact specific roles is also important, Borgonovo said, as is investing in L&D and AI literacy.

“How can you really proactively help people upskill and reskill for those skills that are going to become in higher demand?” she said. “For us, fluency for all, then role-specific, AI learning, and then like this upskilling and reskilling for the future roles, or the futures of skills, has become paramount.”

L&D and me. Long ago were the days of one-size-fits-all L&D offerings. Today’s employees need personalized, conversational training, said Mike Ciancio, chief marketing officer at performance management software company Centrical.

“If you bring AI into the job, everyone’s job is changing from a day-to-day basis. They’re going to have to learn different things. They’re going to have to learn different ways,” Ciancio said. “The learning capabilities that they need need to be bite-sized, need to be personalized, and they need to be effective, in order for them to be effective in their job, not now, but 12 to 18 months from now.”

As employees, and HR pros, develop their AI literacy, Morick said they’ll need to improve their data literacy, too.

“There’s data that’s locked all through different silos in different parts of the organization that you need to access in order to truly personalize an experience for an employee,” she said. “Once they understand that, then they’re less afraid, and you kind of have to push them to say, ‘This is our future,’ and they’ll be excited and come up with new things.”

HR pros can also encourage employees to take ownership of their AI L&D, Borgonovo said. This can help improve engagement.

“People are not going to use something that they don’t trust, and trust really comes from like collaboration, like transparency, creating an environment where people can experiment,” she said. “Your people leaders have to create that culture, and they also have to model comfortably for them. What does it mean to use AI in support of being a much more impactful and effective leader?”

History repeats itself. The hesitancy employees feel about AI today is eerily reminiscent of the hesitancy employees felt about the internet in the early aughts. Morick and Ciancio agreed there are lessons to be learned from how employees and leaders adapted to the digital age.

“We can’t imagine what the future is going to be…and I think that’s why it is important that we bring the people along that are a little resistant, because there will be a place for you in this new world,” Morick said. “You just have to upskill yourself and find that place, and it’s our job to help find that place for them in the organization, to build the roles of the future.”

Avoid “AI for AI sake,” Ciancio cautioned, noting that some companies may have made organizational changes too quickly just to say they were at the forefront of AI advancements. After all, he said, “there’s always the pendulum.”

“We went really, really far on one side on the AI thing, and I think we’re starting to come back a little bit to understand what the true power of AI is, but more so in the aspect of amplifying the human involvement,” Ciancio added.