Masterclass at Work's advice: Add Gen AI to learning and development strategies

It may be time to trust generative AI with tasks beyond just summarizing and note-taking — like coaching and mentoring young talent. 

Seventy-percent of Gen Zers believe that personalized learning aided by generative AI would significantly improve their learning experience, according to a recent survey from software company Salesforce, with more than half saying they trust the technology to help them make informed decisions. And it's up to employers to provide them with those experiences if they want to recruit and retain them. 

"Gen Z is having trouble adapting to the culture of work because they entered into the workplace at a time of high volatility, coming out of the pandemic with offices shifting between different work models," says John Scott, head of learning and design at workplace educational platform MasterClass at Work. "Adding generative AI to learning and development strategies opens up a lot of possibilities for support." 

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For example, if an employees' manager is busy and isn't available for questions, generative AI — such as ChatGPT — could help employees solve problems and find answers on their own. The ability for the technology to role play and simulate a mentor can also help young employees as they prepare for meetings or practice their presentations, by delivering precise and accurate feedback tailored to the company's wants and needs. A good responsive platform keeps young talent as engaged as they would be with an in-person mentor, while also strengthening their independence and autonomy. 

"There's [a] great benefit when people don't feel dependent on other people at the organization, and instead feel like there are tools in place that can really help them navigate their everyday lives at work," Scott says. "It will always be important for young talent to have access to their leaders, but for them to know they have a resource that's been trained by their organization to support them and help them in growing, learning and executing tasks that are important to their career — that's huge." 

It's not just young talent who benefit from the integration of Gen AI. One of the most important benefits to this kind of tech investment, Scott adds, is the way it has the potential to make employees — both old and new — more productive and effective in their roles. 

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"The redundant tasks that employees have to do in their day tend to be time sucks and demotivating, but they're what AI is really good at," Scott says. "If it understands a very clear context about the task and the objective, and it's given the information that it needs to automate lower-level tasks, it opens up more time for employees to do higher-order thinking and higher-level tasks that are going to be more valuable to business and more motivating to them as an individual."

In an effort to both take some of the burden off of organizations and train their own workforce, MasterClass at Work launched its own Gen AI series — a three-part course collection that teaches how all generations can apply generative AI to their professional and educational environments — available to any company in their network through their platform. The classes offer easy-to-understand explanations of basic and complex AI concepts, as well as real-world examples of the kinds of soft and hard skills Gen AI can help develop.  

But even if it isn't with the use of Masterclass at Work's guide, Scott urges employers to start being proactive when it comes to integrating more tech into their learning and development opportunities and figure out what kind of program works for them. Generative AI isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and it's in employers' best interest to be the ones to introduce it to their workforce before they start using the tools unsupervised — especially young, incoming and tech-savvy talent.  

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"If you aren't putting the infrastructure and the IT support in place for people to use tools that you have sanctioned or that you've signed off on, you're going to put yourself at risk as an organization," Scott says. "People are going to want to use the tools regardless, so take those steps to get the tools in place that are right and safe." 

The first step for any organization is to convene with IT and cybersecurity departments about what programs are available and can be integrated. Then, be transparent with employees about the new tools they have access to and set the necessary boundaries and precautions. And while it may sound like a long process, the positive impact it will have in the long-term is worth the trouble. 

"The ability to leverage this technology is going to be really important for incoming talent's future career growth and development," Scott says. "When a young person sees that a company is proactively helping people use technology and grow their AI literacy, it means that company is investing in their future, and that's where they're going to want to be."