The task of predicting L&D’s future is challenging but not impossible. So far in this year’s three-part report series, we’ve reflected on the journey L&D teams have shared over the last 20 years. We've identified practices that define top-performing organizations and consulted data collected from learning leaders, business leaders and employees to establish key areas that organizations should prioritize today (such as strategic and business alignment). Armed with this knowledge, this report concentrates on the evolving landscape of workplace learning to identify how L&D teams can prepare to meet the changing needs of the business.  

The report covers digital intelligence as an L&D capability, strategic technology use, the impact of climate change on employment and skills, fostering innovative learning cultures, and leveraging the strengths of multi-generational workforces. 

Anna Barnett, Senior Researcher at Mind Tools, comments: 

“As a function in the business, L&D is evolving. Today, L&D teams that are achieving the most are not just “delivering training” but transforming businesses through learning. The role is an important one that can’t be properly fulfilled by professionals with traditional attitudes and capabilities. The industry needs L&D specialists who are courageous, empathetic and willing to share with others, to establish learning cultures that are innovative, connected, and self-directed.”   

Unlock the insights: download the full report now. 

The post Megatrends Reshaping the Future: The Crucial Role of L&D in Business Transformation  appeared first on Mind Tools.

We are excited to announce that Mind Tools is partnering with Tractus, a leading learning technology and talent development consultancy in Texas. Tractus delivers modern learning solutions including learning platforms, program development and content development to small and mid-sized businesses across the US market. 

Nahdia Khan, Chief Impact Officer, Mind Tools, says: 

“At Mind Tools we’re always keen to collaborate with organizations that align with our mission to empower people to thrive at work. Tractus supports a wide range of innovative, forward-thinking businesses as their trusted learning technology partner. Our partnership with Tractus is a fantastic opportunity to share Mind Tools resources in personal effectiveness, management and leadership with their clients.” 

Todd Strosnider, Founder and CEO, Tractus, says: 

“We partner with best-in-class learning platforms and content providers to support the learning and development needs of small and mid-sized businesses. We are now delighted to add Mind Tool’s trusted, well-researched and engaging learning and career development resources to our product offer. Together, we can help more businesses focus on moments that matter, transforming big ideas into real results.”  

About Tractus 

Tractus brings together the right learning strategy, content and technology to deliver customized training and development solutions for small and mid-sized businesses ready to transform big ideas into real results. Tractus helps SMBs optimize their training programs to accelerate performance, create learning experiences that elevate and attract talent, and build a culture of learning that fuels growth and innovation.

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Learning Pool, the leading global provider of workplace learning solutions, today announced the launch of AI Conversations, a Generative AI offering that allows employees to practice challenging workplace conversations with an AI generated character. AI Conversations leverages OpenAI’s GPT4 to provide users with convincing, conversational responses, but also detailed, personalized feedback to help them improve their communication and management skills. It’s a breakthrough way for companies in any industry to ensure productive workplace conversations.

Only 21% of employees today feel that they received meaningful feedback in the last week, according to Gallup. It’s up to team leaders to coach and develop their people, but they are often left on their own to learn to do so. The fear and anxiety of a difficult conversation leads many to avoid the discussion all together – a disservice to employees and the greater business. Organizations must equip employees with the resources to feel confident in all kinds of conversations, like salary negotiations, poor performance, and goal setting. Intelligent eLearning tools like AI Conversations can help bridge the communications gaps for managers and their teams.

“Workplace conversations are delicate and often high stakes. With AI Conversations, our team has set a new standard for what’s possible in intelligent eLearning,” said Ben Betts, CEO of Learning Pool.

“This first-of-its-kind capability introduces the power of generative AI to workplace learning and better enables the kind of workplace where we all want to work – one with managers that offer clear and productive feedback.”

Human interaction is incredibly difficult to simulate and scale. AI Conversations changes this by using GPT4 to generate limitless responses to user inputs. These responses can be tailored to fit any combination of character attributes, from their mood – frustrated, happy, etc. – to their role and tenure at an organization. With both two-way audio and text-based options, scenarios are simple to deploy on any learning platform, and organizations can pull from Learning Pool’s off-the-shelf scenarios or create custom scenarios tailored to meet individual needs.

Learning Pool has partnered with Mind Tools, a celebrated provider of business skills, personal development, and leadership and management content, to produce the first off-the-shelf AI Conversations collection. This collection focuses on managing the performance of a direct report. Mind Tools applied its expertise to the authoring and assessment framework of each scenario.

“When it comes to incorporating generative AI into workplace learning, organizations will be looking for authoring that is trusted and credible,” explained Nahdia Khan, Chief Impact Officer at Mind Tools.

“We’re able to deliver on that expectation with AI Conversations – building on our proven 25 years of content provenance equipping leaders and their teams. Pilot participants validated our approach, reporting that AI Conversations provided clear, realistic, and personalized feedback, and the conversation with the AI tool felt natural.”

Learn more about AI Conversations

Explore how this new AI tool can support your managers in the most engaging way. Find out more here.

About Learning Pool

Learning Pool creates learning experiences that deliver extraordinary outcomes for workplaces investing in the performance and skills of their people. Supporting thousands of businesses investing in learning experiences for their global learners, Learning Pool’s innovative AI learning platforms and skills solutions combine integrated technology and adaptive content to produce actionable insight on every learner’s performance. Its world-class customer experience ensures clients can harness its unique ability to produce a highly skilled workforce, new competitive advantages, and an organization prepared for whatever the future might bring. Wherever you find ambitious workplaces investing in their people, you’ll find Learning Pool.

The post AI Conversations launches, bringing the power of generative AI to workplace learning appeared first on Mind Tools.

For the past almost four years, Shabnam has worked at leading exam board AQA initially as Board Trustee and thereafter as Executive Director, Strategy and Business Development.

Prior to AQA, she has worked for leading brands such as Macmillan, Reed Elsevier, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Discovery Education and Cambridge University Press & Assessment in senior full-time and advisory roles encompassing commercial strategy, business development and profit/loss management. She specializes in both domestic and international education and has lived and worked across a number of countries in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, and the USA. Her experience covers all school years, higher education, English language teaching and workforce learning across the spectrum of digital content, software as a service (SaaS), assessment, education services and education delivery.

Shabnam shares her thoughts on joining Mind Tools as Chief Executive.

"I am delighted to have been appointed to lead Mind Tools at this exciting time in its growth trajectory. I believe that the Mind Tools on-demand digital learning resources, its global footprint and talented team uniquely position it to capitalize on the increasing demand for reskilling/upskilling solutions. I am grateful to John for his tremendous contribution and look forward to playing my part in making sure Mind Tools continues to deliver market-leading workforce learning solutions and services."

Outgoing Chief Executive John Yates joined Mind Tools in May 2020, in the depths of lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. He successfully steered the business through the integration of three acquired businesses, a replatforming of the main Mind Tools content library, and in 2022, change in ownership with the acquisition of Emerald Group by the Cambridge Information Group.

He leaves the business at a time that Mind Tools, now operating as a standalone business outside of the Emerald Group, is exploring new product enhancements such as Skill Bites and credentialing for its consumer and enterprise customers, alongside partnerships with market leaders, Learning Pool, to leverage the capabilities of generative AI.

Tragically, in February 2022, John and his family suffered a deep personal loss, with the death of their daughter; and he has more recently been diagnosed with heart failure. He leaves to spend time with his family after a long and varied career.

“Mind Tools is a wonderful organization, and I have had the support of warm, committed human beings throughout my time here. I am very sorry to have to leave, but I’m delighted to have led the recruitment of a brilliant new CEO. Shabnam will bring new energy and a new vision to this brilliant place."

Any questions regarding this press release please contact:
Nahdia Khan, Chief Impact Officer, Mind Tools
nrkhan@mindtools.com

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We are excited to announce that Mind Tools is partnering with Guider to give clients access to simple, seamless mentor matching, monitoring and reporting services. Combining Mind Tools on-demand resources in personal effectiveness, management and leadership and guided learning paths with personalized mentoring enables L&D leaders to unlock the potential of their people and boost organizational performance.

Nahdia Khan, Chief Impact Officer, Mind Tools, says:
“At Mind Tools we’re always looking to collaborate with organizations that align with our mission to empower people to thrive at work. Our partnership with Guider gives L&D leaders a fantastic opportunity to deliver significant impact across their organization, by combining our trusted learning resources in personal effectiveness, management and leadership with personalized mentoring to help people perform, manage and lead with confidence.”

Nick Ross, CEO and Founder of Guider says:
“Guider’s award-winning, easy-to-use software is already streamlining mentoring programs, from onboarding and DE&I to talent identification and leadership development, for companies such as Deloitte, EY, FIFA and Kantar. With this partnership, we are delighted to offer our customers the opportunity to boost the effectiveness of their mentoring programs with Mind Tool’s well-researched and engaging learning and career development resources.”

The post Mind Tools partners with Guider mentoring software to help people build better workplace connections appeared first on Mind Tools.

Each Skill Bite has eight to ten sessions, with each session taking just 10-15 minutes to complete. Members start by assessing their current level of competence, then go on to learn new skills and record their learning. They’re also encouraged to take action and reflect to see how they have improved.

Members can currently benefit from six Skill Bites:

1. Collaboration - A vital skill for team and organization success
2. Stress Management - Discover your triggers and how to deal with them
3. Critical Thinking - Develop your skill for making objective, well-thought-out decisions
4. Giving Feedback - How to give feedback candidly and respectfully
5. Problem Solving - Learn tools and methods to help you tackle challenges effectively
6. Resilience - How to bounce back when things don't go quite as expected.

Owen Ferguson, Chief Product Officer with Mind Tools, explains more:

“Mind Tools Skill Bites use evidence-informed learning techniques such as spacing, chunking, reminders and commitment mechanisms to encourage the development of essential skills to boost your career and productivity. For this initial phase we’ve chosen six topics that we know are common pain points for many people and these are now available exclusively to Mind Tools members. We’ll be launching more topics and rolling out the courses to our Enterprise partners in the coming months.”

Find out more and sign up for Skill Bites here.

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