Employee learning

Should Robots Be Training Your Employees?

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Phonlamai Photo/Shutterstock

Here is an interesting twist in the world of training and developing employees: Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be better at reading emotional intelligence than HR professionals.

Click here to read the article.

An exceptional human skill is reading people’s emotions, but robots may be better at it than trained HR professionals. A robot with the proper algorithm may be better served training employees, supervisors, and managers on the soft skills of emotional intelligence than an HR professional.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. By using AI and machine-learning algorithms a greater amount of HR data can be analyzed and evaluated at a level of efficiency and accuracy that no human can achieve. Could you image a HR professional evaluating an employee’s emotion with 87 per cent accuracy? Well, AI can reach that level of emotional accuracy. Researchers at MIT have created a wireless system called EQ-Radio, which uses wireless signals to scan an individual and identify if an individual is excited, happy, angry, or sad.

Click here to watch how MIT has developed an emotion detection machine.

Imagine what impact this type of technology may have on training and developing employees? Instead of using the end-of-training session reaction evaluations (commonly known as happy sheets), you can measure if your training had an emotional affect. In addition, there are many other HR applications of using emotions to understand employees at work.

AI and machine learning algorithms may just start to become mainstream in some workplaces. HR must be aware of the impacts of AI on the employees that work in organizations, how to use these new technologies, and how to manage the changes that these technologies will have.

Discussion Questions

Think about AI, machine learning, and EQ-Radio. How could these technologies disrupt training and development in the workplace?

Identify some of the potential ethical concerns that HR departments will need to address when companies start using emotional detection scanners in the workplace? What could HR do to reduce ethical and personal privacy concerns?

Are You Mobile, Ready and Willing to Learn?

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To say that the power of mobile technology has changed our world, would be stating the obvious! Every single person who has a mobile device is holding a wealth of information, literally, in the palm of her or his hand.  With great power, comes great opportunity – Or does it?

Source: Purestock/Thinkstock
Source: Purestock/Thinkstock

The following article discusses how access to employee training can easily be provided through individual employee mobile devices.

Click here to read the article. 

Since the technology is already in place, it appears to be a natural step in the evolution of training methodologies to push workplace programs through mobile technology.  If employees are playing Candy Crush Saga during their ‘lunch breaks’ on their mobile devices, why not provide them with training applications and games that promote workplace knowledge at any time?

This is where the boundaries of work/life distinctions start to become blurred.  Just because the technology is able to provide the training, should employees be willing to participate?  What if the employee uses their mobile device to do work place training after working hours?  Will we need to pay for overtime?  Who owns the technology? Is the device the property of the employee or the employer? Will we need to track employee access patterns 24/7?

These questions will continue as long as technology continues to drive increasing changes into our workplaces.  Our job, as HR professionals, is to figure out how we can catch up to these changes.  We have the choice to, either shape how technology should be used or be shaped by the technology that we must use. We may not like what the later option looks like.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Why would employees be resistant to workplace training through mobile devices?
  2. If you had to use your mobile device to access workplace training would you do so after ‘working hours’? If yes, why?  If no, why not?
  3. What types of training would be easiest for employees to access through mobile devices?
  4. What types of training programs do you think you would not want employees to access through mobile devices?