Key Takeaways

  • Yes, mandatory AI trainings are useful for employees.
  • A basic understanding of AI helps employees think outside the box and innovate in their area of expertise.
  • The next level of AI training should be based on the employee’s expertise.

I want to share my thoughts on organizations’ push towards AI trainings. Why are organizations chasing AI trainings? Why do organizations want their employees to be AI skilled?

Let’s have a quick look into the details — what is it, and how does this work? We have a lot of feedback from our community stating that yes, organizations are pushing for generic AI trainings that are not related to job roles, and people are getting exhausted.

Why are AI Trainings Exhausting?

Employees are getting exhausted by these trainings. Some of them are mandatory, and some come with external certification exams — for example, you may need to take an AI certification from Google.

Why are AI Trainings Exhausting? — figure 1
Figure 1: Why are AI Trainings Exhausting?

So, who will pay for the certification? The organization will pay for it. Most of the folks fail it because they don’t understand what AI is, and they are not educated about the opportunities the organizations are looking for.

Another reason is that they don’t have an IT background. They don’t know what IT is or how AI works.

So why do those people need AI training?

Organizations are trying to understand and educate the employees so that they will come back with some idea.

So why do those people need AI training? — figure 2
Figure 2: So why do those people need AI training?

Let’s take the example of a finance department employee taking AI training. They can automate, enhance, or secure a financial process with AI. Currently, the monthly financial settlement process takes one month to complete. The employee from the finance department would be able to think about enabling AI for that process and brainstorm with their colleagues.

This is one of the advantages of having AI training for all the employees in an organization. They can be innovators for the organization and improve its processes with the help of an AI framework.

Challenges

Organizations wanted to have very generic training on AI — how AI works, and so on. But the challenge is that they are not giving employees enough time to work exclusively on AI studies.

The company wanted all the employees to do this as an extra activity — maybe something like a personal development program. So, they need to do their BAU (business as usual) as well as this.

Structured Approach

Structured Approach — figure 3
Figure 3: Structured Approach

Organizations must follow a structured way of training employees rather than just making it mandatory training.

  • Passion: Educate employees about the real-world personal and professional advantages of AI trainings.
  • Expectation: Explain what is expected from employees.
  • Advantages: Build a potential pool of employees and dedicate their time to AI learning and certification.
  • Freedom: Allow them to come back with crazy or out-of-the-box ideas. Allocate time and freedom for brainstorming and development.
  • Selection: Create a selection process for those ideas and then try to implement the top 5 ideas.
  • Reward: Special talents need to be rewarded and promoted within the organization.
  • Long-Term: Allow employees to educate/train themselves to use AI tools for their expert areas.