How Training Millennials With AI And Personalized Learning Increases Engagement
According to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Millennials are so different than the previous generations that they are now the most studied generation in recent history. These differences have created many changes in the world of training and development.
Millennials have a different set of values that set them apart from their peers. According to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, millennial employees don't have a strong sense of loyalty like the Baby Boomer generation due to the belief that employers prioritize the bottom line over their employees.
This has increased employee turnover rates. The Deloitte survey also found that 43% of Millennials envision leaving their jobs within 2 years while only 28% seek to stay beyond 5 years. The good news is that millennials work at organizations for a longer period of time when they feel that the companies invest in them. That's why training millennials is so important.
These findings have caused employers to prioritize employee training programs in order to increase retention. Unfortunately, businesses lose $13.5 million a year per every 1,000 employees on ineffective training.
The good news is that new strategies such as personalized learning along with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have helped L&D professionals create effective learning experiences that engage millennial employees.
What Is Personalized Learning? Why does it impact the way we train millennials?
Personalized learning is an instructional approach that centers on individual learners' needs and preferences. The objectives, learning content, and delivery methods are customized for each individual learner.
This user-centered approach to online training helps L&D professionals overcome the challenges of engaging millennial employees.
Although personalized learning is an effective and increasingly popular method, there is still a lot of confusion around the role AI and learning analytics play in this strategy.
This is how it works. When an employee starts an online training program, machine learning and predictive analytics collect and analyze information about the learner’s skill level, preferences, and learning styles. Then the program processes this information to make predictions and creates a personalized learning path for the user.
This approach removes many of the challenges that are involved in millennial engagement. Millennials are the most disengaged segment of workers. A recent research by Gallup found that 55% of millennial employees are disengaged at work. This is concerning if you consider that more than half of the current workforce is a part of the Millennial generation.
How Personalized Learning Increases Engagement When Training Millennials
In 2009 a psychologist named Christy Price discovered the gap between expectations and performance in Millennials. She then developed the theory of the 5 Rs of engaging millennials.
The AI-powered, personalized learning strategy addresses each of these key points, eliminating frustration and increasing learner engagement.
The first R refers to research-based methods. These point out that Millennials prefer a mixture of learning methods and value choice. Personalized learning meets these needs by providing employees with content in a variety of ways that are tailored to the way the individual learns best.
Relevance is the second key finding. Christy Price found out that millennials value relevant information more than the amount of information provided. Personalized training programs ensure that employees are only taking the courses that are most relevant to their skill level and job role. This helps millennials stay focused and increases knowledge retention.
Rationale is the third key to engagement. This key refers to the reasoning or the "why" behind instructions or processes. Millennials don't take instructions at face value. They want to have a deeper understanding. They want to know the rationale behind what is expected of them and why it is relevant. Personalized learning lays out a clear path that proves the relevance of training, which increases engagement.
The last two Rs are about relaxed learning environments and positive rapport. Millennials learn best in learning environments that are more relaxed, and they desire a lot of feedback on their performance. Online training programs provide bite-sized portions of content that keeps employees engaged. The employee can work through content at their own speed most of the time and they will also receive feedback in real time.
In addition to addressing the 5 Rs of millennial engagement, personalized learning removes many of the other barriers to engagement. The remote workforce is growing rapidly. Many employees work on teams that have employees distributed all over the world. This means they may speak different languages, live in different time zones, and have different skill levels.
Personalized learning provides a customized Learning and Development journey that keeps them engaged while leveling up their skills. Learning content in these training programs can be accessed at any time on different devices, and advanced algorithms can even address language barriers.
Conclusion
The current workforce is changing and so are the learning strategies and methods needed to train the next generation of employees. Millennials learn differently than the generations that came before them.
To engage today's workforce, employee training programs need to be designed with the current and future workforce in mind. Millennials are already the largest group of working employees today and are only expected to grow in numbers over the next several years.
L&D teams need learning solutions that will help them engage their entire workforce, which is a difficult task if you consider how differently millennials learn in comparison to their peers.
The number of engaged millennial workers is already low. Providing personalized training programs for your employees will help increase engagement productivity and employee retention.
Personalized learning experiences engage employees by providing them with the most relevant learning content in a format that best suits their individual preferences. This strategy customizes learning to meet the needs of the growing group of millennials as well as the rest of your workforce. To learn more about personalized learning, check out the eBook Personalized Learning Experiences: Gearing Up For The Millennial Workforce.
