As companies transform to support today’s new hybrid work environment, so must their learning programs. Transformation efforts place new pressures on learning and development (L&D) professionals, who are tasked with delivering a broad range of engaging and impactful learning solutions to diverse employee audiences, faster and more cost efficiently than ever.
In addition to addressing technology-driven transformation efforts, as well as related reskilling and upskilling of workers, training must also speak to the needs of your employees — who have a desire for increased knowledge and career advancement.
Add in today’s constantly changing regulatory environment, as well as the need to serve diverse audiences, and it becomes imperative that enterprises seek new ways to build and deliver relevant and engaging content to a more distributed workforce and more cost efficiently — fast. That’s where “training velocity” comes into play.
Achieving Training Velocity
To achieve training velocity, companies must look to new tools and techniques to create and deliver learning solutions. It seems like a daunting challenge, right?
Organizations are expediting knowledge transfer and skills training with practices like shorter onboarding practices incorporating flow of work exercises and increased online resources that reduce employee time commitments. These trends have resulted in a desire for more engaging video training — both live and on demand — which speeds up the delivery of employee training content at scale.
Already a widely accepted practice, video learning enables workers to view educational content at times and places that are most convenient to them. What’s more, the prevalence of on-demand video means that employees can have access to a quick refresher if they want to view specific content out in the field or on the job site. Importantly, this kind of delivery of video training is less susceptible to employee resistance because so many people are used to viewing short-form videos on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Video Training Meets AI — And Speed Happens
Modern, self-service video creation tools have certainly helped to accelerate the development of and delivery of training content and at lower costs than traditional video production methods using internal teams or agencies, but nothing in recent years has been (or will be) as impactful as the arrival of generative AI technology. Simply put it will help learning professionals deliver more training content, much more rapidly.
New AI-based tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard make possible the rapid creation of assets for employee training and development programs and can be used in a variety of ways to build highly serviceable first-draft scripts for corporate training and human resources (HR) video. These AI-generated first drafts can subsequently be iterated upon and refined, being made more original and audience-appropriate — keeping in mind caveats to fact check the AI’s output. So, eliminating writer’s block and accelerating the process of working with subject matter experts to write scripts is a big win!
What’s Next? Ready, Prompt, Go!
Companies will soon be able to achieve training velocity thanks to the seamless integration of generative AI with video creation platforms and vast content libraries of relevant business assets. Now, instructional designers and others will have access to a new generation of tools that enable the building of complete, business- and use-case relevant videos, with editable scripts, in just seconds.
Using a set of basic prompts, with or without your own training content, will enable the creation of scripted, animated videos with almost no human intervention — literally, “ready, prompt, go!”
For example, a trainer could build videos by using a prompt as simple as “build a three-minute training video about workplace safety that involves two people having a conversation,” which would result in a draft video that can be very quickly edited and modified or just published as-is.
Or, as another example, a user could prompt their AI-powered video creation platform to create a more in-depth video by being even more specific about the topic and by using more precise and detailed language. They could prompt their video creation platform to make a video on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) to create a one-minute video explaining its importance and how DEIB workforces benefit companies. Additional prompts can drive the AI to explain the importance of DEIB to shareholders and employees, and it can be instructed to provide information on how DEIB will benefit the firm’s service offerings.
At the outset, content creators can select the feeling and tone of their video — by using descriptors like “clear, personable and confident,” or terms like “entertaining” or “professional.” Doing so will help make first drafts even more aligned with the goals and objectives of the video-learning presentation.
This high-velocity approach to delivering engaging and relevant L&D content means that professionals can slash production time and cost, and instantly deliver and deploy new content, in multiple languages, in a matter of minutes — versus hours, days or weeks.
What Training Velocity Delivers
The intersection of digital transformation and L&D, as well as the broader availability of AI tools, means that leading companies are already starting to work towards training velocity.
Ultimately, achieving training velocity will satisfy the ever-growing need for learning content, both now and in the future. Thinking in terms of training velocity empowers companies to gain even greater return on investment (ROI) from L&D efforts, and to focus on major training issues — including focus, retention, employee engagement and cost — rather than getting bogged down in the time- and cost-intensive video production projects. For most corporate learning professionals, the arrival of AI-powered video creation and a new era of training velocity is really great news.
