Employee training is essential to acclimating to a role and absorbing company culture; likewise, it allows people to learn new skills and grow professionally. Nevertheless, the thrill of working for a new company or getting promoted to a new position gets extinguished the second that the “employee training” email pops up in one’s inbox.

Despite companies in the US spending over $100 billion on traditional learning solutions in 2022, the webinars, pre-recorded videos and courses of today are so dull and unengaging that employees hardly retain any of the material. Businesses must set aside these uninspired training methods and lean into next-generation intelligent interface technology to deliver engaging, interactive and memorable learning experiences cost-effectively and at scale.

The Shortcomings of Traditional Employee Training Methods

There are several problems with traditional training methods, which result in costly consequences. The way employees interact with learning material is not conducive to information retention. There are few, if any, opportunities for people to apply the learning material they just consumed.

This phenomenon that describes the loss of information is the forgetting curve, which highlights the need for training methods that promote memorization through application. Once learning ends, employees lose 70% of that information within 24 hours, and 90% is gone within a week. Ultimately, companies end up spending more money and time retraining their teams.

Insufficient training can negatively affect employee retention, with a survey from ClearCompany revealing that 94% of employees would stay longer in their roles if their companies invested in staff development. The problem is that organizations do invest in staff development (to the tune of $100 billion). However, the methods are so ineffective that, to the employee, it feels like there was no effort on the part of their employer.

Employees are also not confident in their abilities. Research from Gartner found that 70% of employees say they haven’t mastered the skills to do their jobs, which could explain why retention is so low.

Next-gen Intelligent Interfaces powered by Digital Humans: How Do They Fit in Training Environments?

Digital humans are real-time intelligent interfaces built to guide, educate, and speak to people in real-time. Custom-trained digital humans present a scalable way for employees to practice and refine their skills through roleplay scenarios. Specifically, digital humans use natural and responsive dialog to create human-like conversations that simulate what teams will encounter in the real world.

For example, digital humans allow sales to practice their pitches across skill sets, such as objection handling, product knowledge and upselling. In a healthcare setting, digital humans replicate natural and realistic conversations to help nurses rehearse the patient-in-take process, i.e., asking for symptoms, medical history, family medical history, etc.

Unlike traditional chatbots, digital humans do not recite a pre-written script but listen and dynamically respond in real-time to the employee based on the flow of the conversation. As a best practice, conversation guardrails should always be incorporated so that the interaction remains safe and on-brand. With these in place, and thanks to generative artificial intelligence (AI), digital humans have a near-infinite variety of conversational outputs, ensuring employees are ready to interact with real-world customers.

The Benefits of Digital Human-led Training

Through digital humans, businesses can ensure employees are free to make mistakes and hone their skills within a controlled environment where there is no risk of losing revenue or offending a real customer. This ability to practice in realistic scenarios and learn from mistakes without the stress and anxiety of practicing on real customers is perfect for onboarding recruits and helping them build their confidence.

In other words, employees can fine-tune skills in realistic conditions without wearing “in-training” on their nametag. Moreover, digital humans enable people to retain more information than traditional methods since there are ample opportunities to apply newly learned information during simulated interactions with digital humans.

Digital humans, while capable of simulating a variety of interactions, support consistency across employee training. In the movies, the mavericks close the most deals, but in reality, consistency and structure lead to the best results.

Organizations can utilize digital humans for learning and development to make their sales cycles and practices more structured, producing more qualified, reliable and knowledgeable workers in the process. Digital humans also create more empathic employees, which is especially helpful in healthcare settings.

In addition to improving overall training effectiveness, employees will enjoy engaging with digital humans. When compared to traditional, text-based learning, digital human learning scored much higher in every category, including effectiveness score, near-total recollection of information and user recommendation.

What Capabilities Make an Ideal Digital Human Solution?

Not all digital human solutions are created equal, and businesses must evaluate the capabilities of each before making a decision. As such, there are several notable characteristics typical of leading solutions that companies must prioritize in their search.

For example, a best-in-class digital human solution should easily incorporate company-specific guidelines, product information, brand language, playbooks, protocols, etc. Not only does this ability allow the digital human to stay focused and not go off-topic, but it also ensures that the learning experiences come from real problems and interactions connected to the company’s products and services. Leading digital human solutions will also use large language models, retrieval-augmented generation and intelligent AI orchestrators to make sure the training conversation is consistent, private and free from AI hallucinations.

Everyone learns in different ways and at varying paces, meaning that while training should cover consistent material, it shouldn’t be the same cookie-cutter experience for every employee. Thankfully, leading digital human solutions can personalize learning experiences for employees, with some providing individualized and non-judgmental feedback such as how the person sounded, if they allowed the customer to speak enough or if they said anything incorrect, further enhancing knowledge retention.

In addition to being accessible in real-time 24 hours a day and from web-enabled devices, advanced digital human solutions are available in many languages and dialects, making them perfect for global enterprises.

The Necessity of Upskilling and Retention in the Age of AI

Anxiety around new technologies is real. Employees expect their employers to prepare them accordingly for the AI revolution. Likewise, with the ability to work from anywhere, people are free to leave a job if it isn’t providing adequate training, underscoring the need for robust retention programs. To that end, it is paramount that organizations leverage digital humans, the modern interface,  and empower their workforce through tailored and highly interactive training experiences.