Today’s changing workforce and market dynamics make it imperative for leaders to focus on not only hiring the right talent but also investing in talent development. Yet, a recent IBM study showed that 60 percent of executives struggle to keep workforce skills current and relevant in the face of rapid technological advancement.

Ongoing learning, training and development are important for improving the knowledge, skills and abilities of your workforce, enabling employees to understand the performance expectations for their job, meet business goals, stay up to date with trends, close skills gaps, learn, improve performance and enhance career growth. Skills transfer to develop traits such as adaptability, problem-solving and critical thinking are also key to fostering a workforce that is constantly growing and reinventing itself.

Learning has Changed

It used to be that information changed slowly and innovation came in short, isolated bursts. Knowledge was centralized at the top of the corporate hierarchy, and there was plenty of time to plan, prepare and execute. Organizational learning methods were typically of the one-size-fits-all variety, without taking into consideration individual needs and learning preferences. Learning was more focused on optimal execution through repeatable, efficient and scalable processes.

Times have changed dramatically, though. Technological advances have drastically changed the way people learn, find answers and solve problems, and consumption of content through social media has changed learner expectations. Today’s workers want to be able to access learning from anywhere, across different devices, at any time they need it. Where they are concerned, learning is most effective when it relates to their task at hand and is in a form that they find engaging and easy to consume or relate to.

How Cognitive Computing Can Help

Cognitive computing has the potential to transform learning at all levels. Cognitive systems learn at scale, understand, reason with purpose and can interact with us in ways that feel more natural. They have the ability to understand structured and unstructured data at astonishing speed and volume; form hypotheses, make considered arguments and prioritize recommendations to help humans make better decisions; and continuously ingest and accumulate data and insight from every interaction.

The most successful organizations are the ones that create a “culture of learning,” a proactive collaboration between the learner and the organization. Organizations need to invest in their employees at all levels, while employees need to invest in their own futures. Cognitive computing can drive this new ecosystem of learning to enable new leaders to emerge, keep employees engaged and help organizations retain those ideal employees they have hired.

Despite understanding the benefits of talent development, many companies tend to invest in training mainly when it is required for succession planning or organizational performance, rather than focusing on the career progression of every employee. Using cognitive systems provides the ability to offer career pathing to all employees. Now, cognitive systems like a cognitive career coach can help people grow their career path by assessing their skills, what they aspire to and where the gaps lie and then recommending learning options that will help them bridge their skills gaps and go where they want to go. These systems can analyze large amounts of data available about jobs, historical promotions and skills within the company to help drive internal mobility and engagement.

For the learner, cognitive technology offers:

• Personalization based on how the person likes to learn, what his or her past experience has been, and what his or her career goals are: Cognitive systems can organize and present vast amounts of learning resources and tailor content according to whether the learning is for immediate application or for general development. It’s a different way of thinking about learning, and it’s served up to the learners so they don’t have to look for it.
• Contextualization, with an understanding of current skill sets as well as the skill sets required in the future, is used to create a personalized pathway to help the learner bridge the gap.
• Engaging design, where the experience and content is developed based on the individual’s needs: The best content and type of module is presented to the learner based on audience rating and effectiveness. Employees can read people’s reviews and decide whether to take a course. Anything learners deem unsatisfactory drops off the list, so what is available is just the high-quality, engaging, motivating content.
• Anticipation of needs and timely content based on market, industry and technological changes, like new trends or regulations

For the organization, detailed analytics can help content creators capture metrics, which enable them to understand both the user and the content:

• Content views, devices used to access learning, user actions like whether and where they paused or replayed content, user habits like how long they typically look at content, the time(s) of day when there is more user traffic, bandwidths used, and user feedback in the form of questions or comments
• Gaps in content, which content is more popular, which mode of delivery is more popular and where people seem to have more questions

The company can also now take a more guided approach toward training, creating customized recommendations for each individual while aligning to organizational goals. Managers can use technology that automatically alerts them about training programs suitable for each member of their team, information about the number of similar employees who have completed each course and found it helpful, and links they can share and discuss.

Cognitive computing and predictive analytics can provide an understanding of not just how the system is performing but how it can perform better in the future and how you can give your learners the content they need more quickly. In addition, you can determine if it is the right information for improving business performance and learn how you can invest better today to trigger the change you want in the future.