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Since the release of ChatGPT by the end of 2022, the world has changed and will never be the same again. The number of generative AI tools that have emerged in every area of business is immense, and the number of AI users has been increasing exponentially. In fact, it is forecasted that the global number of AI tools users worldwide will continuously increase between 2024 and 2030 to reach a total of 414.7 million users, an increase of 131%.

This rise of AI presents challenges but immense opportunities. In this article, we will tackle the most pressing fears that people have about AI, the unlimited opportunities, and how we can help your organization adapt fast to this trend.

The Top Fears Around AI

Artificial intelligence is not without its challenges. Here are the top fears associated with the use of generative AI.

Fear 1: AI will kill jobs

This is the most widespread fear that employees have about AI. However, AI will not be killing jobs, but employees who do not use AI will get out of work. The greatest benefit that comes with AI is that it removes the mundane, repetitive part of any job to free you up to focus on the impact-making, relationship-building work that no machine can make. You can also use AI for inspiration, proof-reading, double-checking, consulting, etc. Consider it your digital best friend. 

Fear 2: AI gives robotic responses

There are some people who still cannot trust the quality of work generated by AI. This boils down primarily to the way they are using it. It is crucial to understand that Gen AI tools do not function the same way as a Google search. There is an art and science to prompt engineering so that you can write the best prompts to get the best results. More importantly, getting the best results from AI is not about simply writing the first prompt right, but it’s also about learning how to do prompt follow-up and personalization. 

Fear 3: AI poses a great data security risk

Generative AI has made cybersecurity crimes easier than ever. In fact, 40% of all phishing emails targeting businesses are now generated by AI. Moreover, 61% of organizations saw an increase in deepfake attacks over the past year, many of which were generated by AI. With that in mind, it is not surprising that 60% of IT professionals feel their organizations are not prepared to counter AI-generated threats. 

All hope is not lost, though! AI, on the other hand, can also be used to strengthen data security systems, compensate for cybersecurity skills gaps, and build AI-powered preventive strategies. 

Fear 4: AI will kill copyrights

AI imposes huge intellectual property and copyright infringement issues. The violations primarily stem from the illegitimate use of copyrighted work as input to the training data given to the AI model. To safeguard against this huge risk, organizations should demand terms of service from generative AI platforms that confirm proper licensure of the training data that feed their AI to ensure the safety of organizational data. Furthermore, organizations need to raise awareness about such issues among their employees, especially the ones working in content creation, design, media, or software development. 

Fear 5: AI will weaken human skills over time

It is true that you lose the skills you do not lose. However, AI shall not replace human employees completely. Employees are still going to use all their skills on the job. It is just that they will use the skills that matter more. Moreover, AI can actually help develop employees’ skills. There are many Gen AI tools that produce highly simulated scenarios and case studies that make learning the hardest skills easy in a safe environment. Our AI Conversation Simulator, Caisy, does just that, helping you develop your skills while receiving real-time, personalized feedback.

Is Your Organization AI-Ready?

These were the top AI-related fears that organizations and employees worldwide have. Some of them are real, others unfounded. In all cases, the unlimited opportunities presented by AI necessitate that we overcome the fears, mitigate the risks, and develop our organizations’ AI capabilities. To learn more about our AI offerings, explore our AI Skills Solutions.

Aside from welcoming new joiners, organizational onboarding serves the purpose of equipping new employees with all the information they need to succeed in the organization and their roles. Despite its obvious benefits, around 1 in 3 employers don’t have a structured onboarding process.

In this blog post, we’ll explore why onboarding matters, its components, and how it is done right.

Why Onboarding Matters?

The importance of onboarding to organizations cannot be underestimated. Onboarding plays a key role in ensuring the smooth sailing of new joiners, reducing time to optimal performance, and retaining the people you have worked hard to attract to your organization. Here are the top benefits of onboarding.

1. Increasing New Hire Performance

Research shows that effective onboarding can improve new employee productivity by 60%. It is simply easier for employees to reach optimal performance faster when they know the system, the people, what is expected of them, and how to get things done.

2. Increasing New Hire Retention

You will be surprised to know that 1 out of 5 new hires exits within the first 45 days of a new job. And what can help turn this around? Onboarding! The first couple of months on the job are the most critical to employee retention. This is the time when the new hire is still not fully committed and may be still getting offers from his recent job search. It is the time when you need to do the most to convince the new hire that they’ve made the right choice by choosing you.

3. Building Organizational Alignment

A successful onboarding program delivered consistently to all new hires ensures that all employees speak the same language. This can go a long way in ensuring smooth processes, frictionless operations, positive employee interactions, and, most importantly, a common organizational culture.

Components of an Effective Onboarding

Now that you know the importance of having a structured, consistent onboarding process, you need to know the main components that make the program successful.

1. Tools Allocation

One of the first things you need to do when an employee comes to the office on Day 1 is to ensure they have all the tools they need to get going with an early start. You need to provide the new hire with their station, laptop, accessories, wifi connection, email account, access cards, etc. as early on as possible. Moreover, you can even pump it up more by gifting the new hire a ‘welcome kit’ that may include more fun items, such as a mug with their name, pen, notebook, etc.

2. Compliance Training

There is no better time to provide the new hire with compliance training than when they are still fresh to the organization and not yet loaded with work. Compliance training may include code of conduct, information security, health & safety training, and much more.

3. Culture Orientation

Culture is one of the key components of any successful onboarding program. Your new hire needs to know about the organizational history, structure, vision, mission, values, catalyzing behaviors, principles, and artifacts. This helps set the tone for the new hire and accelerates their fitting in.

4. Job Orientation

A successful onboarding program also must contain an element of job orientation. In this part of the program, the new hire is introduced to their job role, description, KPIs, and, most importantly, performance expectations. This also includes visibility into the organizational objectives and how the new hire’s role fits in.

5. System Orientation

Most organizations today flaunt more than one system that they use to automate their work. They may have a system for HR processes, one for communication, one for procurement requests, another for project management, and many more. With such myriad systems and tools, it is important to ensure that before the end of the program, the new hire has gained access and knowledge of how to use all the tools needed for their role.

How to Get Onboarding Right?

Once you have a fully-fledged onboarding program that comprises all these main components, you can follow these general tips to implement the program successfully.

1. Use an onboarding checklist

An onboarding checklist goes a long way in helping you stay on top of things and keep organized. It ensures you don’t miss anything important, gives visibility to the new hire into their onboarding plan, and ensures buy-in if you require the new hire’s sign-off at the end.

2. Make it human

It is very important that you don’t get lost in the trees and miss the forest. After all, the new hire is probably overwhelmed and slightly worried. At every step of the way, ensure you connect the new hire with the ‘people’ who can help them with the topic at hand. It is also critical that you leverage the onboarding period to start the new hire’s relationship with their peers and manager on the right foot. You can even schedule a ‘meet & greet lunch’ with the team as part of the onboarding.

3. Measure effectiveness

You cannot improve what you don’t measure. Take the time to survey the new hire’s opinion at the end of the program to learn what went well and what needs improvement. A best practice related to measuring onboarding effectiveness is to also share an effectiveness survey three months post onboarding. This 90-day survey gives you indispensable insights into the effectiveness of your program because, unlike the former one, it is filled in with a deeper perspective from the new hire.

Digitize Your Onboarding Process

Do you believe like us that successful onboarding is important? If yes, you can always provide a seamless, digital onboarding experience to your new hires. Visit our talent management solutions to learn more.

Organizations achieve an average of 147% higher earnings per share when their number of talented managers increases and the rate of engaged employees doubles. However, with only 40% of leaders rating their organization’s leadership quality as “very good” or “excellent”, the need for leadership development training becomes even more serious.

The question, thus, becomes, ‘what skills do we need to help leaders develop?’, and, with the 2024 LEADx Leadership Development Benchmark Report highlighting insufficient time as the top challenge behind leadership development training failure, the question also becomes, ‘and how can we do it?’. 

With our micro digital leadership development courses, leaders in your organizations can develop their skills at their own pace and convenience. With regards to what courses they can take, we have compiled for you a list of some of the top-rated leadership courses we offer.

   1. Business Execution: How Things Get Done 

Business execution is the “how” of getting things done. Leaders can use business execution to drive performance and strategies in the right direction, to solve problems, and to inspire others. In this course, your leaders will learn about the characteristics that define effective business execution culture and the three elements needed to execute a business plan: practice, planning, and people. They’ll also learn actionable strategies for fostering a business execution culture.

The Course Objectives

• Identify characteristics of a business execution culture
• Recognize effective leadership practices for business execution
• Identify how to guide the execution of a business plan
• Choose business execution techniques that motivate people to get things done
• Select actionable strategies to benefit from business execution

2. Effectively Directing & Delegating as a Manager 

Understanding the essential responsibilities leaders have when directing and delegating to others and the practices they should employ in order to meet those responsibilities will help them fulfill their duties and realize the potential of their entire teams.

This course provides information on the key proficiencies of managing people, such as setting direction and establishing clear objectives and goals for direct reports. It discusses the importance of organizing, as well as communicating for clarity and direction. It also covers the best practices for planning delegation and the techniques leaders need to carry through with delegation. The course also details the importance of monitoring delegated tasks to ensure employees are on the right track.

The Course Objectives

• Sequence the steps in setting the direction and pace of work as a manager
• Identify organizing actions a manager should typically take
• Recognize aspects of communicating for clarity and direction when directing employees
• Identify essential elements of planning to delegate
• Recall strategies for delegating tasks
• Identify examples of ways to follow up after delegating tasks

3. Engaging & Challenging Your Top Performers 

Research shows that a top performer can be 400% more productive than an average performer. Such top-performing employees play a significant role in your organization’s success and are critical to its future. Replacing them is not only hard, but also expensive. However, retaining such top performers is not easy; they are usually ambitious and are often sought after by other organizations. If they are not happy or engaged in your organization, they may easily find another job. 

In this course, we help your leaders identify the typical characteristics of top performers, learn what motivates them, and know what to do to keep them engaged and challenged.

The Course Objectives

• Identify key traits common to top performing individuals
• Identify techniques for attracting and retaining top performers
• Identify best practices for keeping top performers motivated
• Identify strategies to effectively manage the top performers of your organization

4. Gauging Your Leadership Performance 

Leaders’ ability to monitor and assess their own progress as they develop is vital to ensure their growth and overall success as leaders. In this course, leaders in your organization will learn about techniques they can use to carry out a self-assessment, such as reflective journaling, surveys and checklists, and 360-degree feedback. They’ll also learn ways to increase their motivation and manage their own learning by creating a leadership development plan.

The Course Objectives

• List the steps in using reflective journaling for self-assessment
• Recognize the process for using surveys and checklists for self-assessment
• Identify the benefits of self-assessment via 360-degree feedback
• Recognize the techniques for leading and listening
• Identify ways to challenge and empower yourself
• Recognize the techniques for rewarding yourself for achieving your goals
• Take appropriate actions to prepare a leadership development plan

5. Learning from Failure & Success 

Failure is trendy. Every day you can read about failure being celebrated for lessons learned. People are encouraged to fail as fast as they can, with buzzwords exhorting “Fail Fast,” “Fail Big,” and “Fail Often.” But while you certainly can learn from failures, you can also learn powerfully from successes. The key is to take advantage of all your experiences to learn essential lessons that will help you prosper in the future. 

In this course, your leaders will learn methods to glean growth and learning from any experience, and to identify each stage of the success cycle to make that happen. They’ll also examine actions that allow them to learn from setbacks or even mistakes, and how to use their successes to inspire and guide themselves to future triumphs.

The Course Objectives

• Identify key actions to enable you to learn from any experience
• Recognize the key stages of the success cycle
• Identify key actions that foster an attitude of learning from failure
• Choose techniques to help you use successes to inspire and guide you

Kickstart Your Leadership Development Today

These were the top leadership courses we offer that every leader must take to excel in their roles. If you’re interested in learning more about our leadership development courses, visit https://xpertlearning.com/leadership-2/ or contact us at enquiries@xpertlearning.com for a free, quick demo.

Since the early 2000s, there has been a significant increase in the emphasis on sustainable organizational practices. Investors, employees, and consumers are now prioritizing organizations’ sustainability efforts. For instance, 77% of consumers are inclined to buy from companies dedicated to making a positive impact on the world, and 73% of investors consider environmental and social improvements as key factors in their investment decisions. These figures represent a stark contrast to the attitudes prevalent two decades ago.

In this blog, we will delve into the concept of organizational sustainability and provide insights on how to kick off an organizational sustainability strategy.

What is Organizational Sustainability?

Sustainability is a leadership approach that transcends the traditional focus on a single bottom line—profits—to embrace a broader set of goals known as the triple bottom line. This concept, often referred to as the 3 Ps, includes profit, people, and planet.

Organizations committed to sustainability operate on the principle that fulfilling present needs should not jeopardize the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Consequently, sustainable organizations create benefits for their employees, communities, and the environment, ensuring positive impacts for both current and future generations.

The Three Pillars of Sustainability

For an organization to achieve sustainability, it must realign its goals around these three pillars.

1. The People Pillar

This pillar emphasizes that growth should not come at the expense of people. It reflects a deeper understanding of a business’ responsibilities towards its employees, customers, and the broader community. A sustainable business considers the short, mid, and long-term interests of its employees, customers, stakeholders, and the community wherein it operates.

2. The Planet Pillar

This pillar is based on the understanding that long-term business growth is unattainable on an unsafe planet. Therefore, organizations committed to sustainability must prioritize practices that protect our environment and ensure its safety.

3. The Profit Pillar

While generating profits is a natural inclination for most organizations, it should not overshadow the other two pillars. Profit must be pursued responsibly, ensuring long-term viability. This involves assessing the sustainability of business directions, operations, and projects, and making necessary adjustments. This pillar often encompasses compliance, proper governance, and risk management, which is why it is sometimes referred to as the governance pillar.

What is an ESG Strategy?

An ESG strategy is an acronym that stands for three principal strategies: environmental, social, and governance strategies. These strategies set an organization’s main direction and principles regarding the three pillars, which in turn translate into practices and initiatives to guarantee organizational sustainability.

Common ESG Practices

There are many ESG practices that are gaining traction worldwide. Here are the top practices.

1. Environmental Practices

Organizations are increasingly focused on reducing their carbon footprints, packaging waste, water usage, and other ecological impacts. They also emphasize the environmental sustainability of their supply chains, ensuring that raw material sourcing does not lead to deforestation or biodiversity loss.

 2. Social Practices

This pillar centers on fair treatment of employees. Businesses are implementing retention and engagement strategies, improving working conditions with better maternity and family benefits, flexible scheduling, learning and development opportunities, competitive compensation, and safe work environments.

Common practices in this pillar also include fostering good relationships with the community. Organizations ensure that the communities they operate in benefit from their profits through initiatives like fundraising, sponsorships, scholarships, and investments in local public projects. On a global scale, businesses work to ensure the safety and fair treatment of individuals within their global supply chains.

3. Governance Practices

This pillar involves establishing ethics and compliance policies, risk management practices, and conducting internal audits. These measures help prevent conflicts of interest, unethical or illegal activities, and risky decisions that could jeopardize an organization’s operations, performance, or reputation.

Common Sustainability Certifications

There are many certifications that your organization can aim to acquire in order to gain evidence of the success of its sustainability commitment. Here are the top certifications.

ISO 14001

The International Organization for Standardization governs many quality standards that businesses follow. ISO 14001 is one of these quality standards. The standard is set to ensure legal obligations are met and organizations recognize their environmental impacts. The certificate is issued to more than 360,000 organizations.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

A globally recognized certification, LEED by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) addresses some of the key reporting and accountability requirements of the construction sector, which naturally links to the renewable energy sector. LEED incorporates various factors, including sourcing of materials, finished building efficiency, maintenance requirements, and the impacts of development on the local community.

B Corporation

The B Corporation logo is one of the latest certifications that small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) strive for to be recognized for sustainability. The certification is based on all aspects of the organization—from the nature of the finished products to the supply chain implications.

FairTrade

The FairTrade movement was founded in 1992 and is currently a long-standing certification that encourages supply chain equity. Today, the FairTrade mark is seen across thousands of consumer goods, such as chocolate, coffee, and other products whose ingredients or labor are outsourced.

Build a Sustainable Organization Today

Whether you are a long way into your sustainability journey or still starting, many of our ethics, compliance, health, and safety programs may help your organization. Explore our courses to learn more.

As technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain continue to disrupt all sectors, the education sector included, we sat down with Sarah Daly, XpertLearning’s EdTech Director, to delve deeper into her insights on the impact of these technologies on educational institutions.

Sarah Daly has more than 20 years of experience working with EdTech, during which she has worked both within a Higher and Professional Education consulting setting, including working with some of the leading organizations in the region.

Q: How would you describe your current role?

A: My role involves any of the solutions we have in place under the XpertLearning portfolio, which fall into the Edtech sector, such as K12, higher education, and continuing professional education. In my role, I’m responsible for vendor relation management, positioning the products, and working with the vendors to meet the localization requirements for this region. And I guess a big part of my responsibility is ensuring that those products become relevant for this market.

Q: And what types of organizations would you say you have worked with so far in your role?

A: A real variety – Federal and Private Education institutions, Ministries and more latterly with Corporate CPD organizations.  We predominantly started working in the UAE, but in the last few years we’ve spread out to working more across the GCC and we’re seeing much more focus in Saudi Arabia and the other GCC countries now. Our clients range from leading education organizations to ministries and federal and private education institutions.

Q: What kind of solutions do you offer these clients?

A: We’ve got a range of ed-tech solutions aligned to the sector. We’ve got a suite of solutions around learning management and student information systems, and we also offer solutions that are based on blockchain technology, which support life-long learning through the provision of digital micro-credentials, certificates and badging. We also provide learning content, both custom and off the shelf, for K12 and higher education.

But what’s more interesting than that is what you do with these solutions, and that’s where we really help. For example, the learning management system is a vessel for learning content and most organizations have had those in place for a number of years in some capacity. But actually, what we’re spending more time on now, is supporting institutions with how we can really make those learning management systems sync to underpin the Teaching and Learning experience.  So, we’re interested in working with our vendors as to how we can meet emerging learning needs for Middle East clients through the use of additional features.

Yes, we offer learning management systems and student information systems, but we’re now seeing a lot more conversations around some of the newer technologies that would finesse those solutions.

Q: One of the learning solutions you provide is built on blockchain, why is that important in the education industry?

A: One of the newer solutions that we have in our portfolio is a digital credentialing solution, which is based on the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain framework. We’ve got a growing client base who utilize that software to provide a passport of qualifications to learners.  The dominant business reason for that solution gaining traction is to ensure the security and the validity of credentials that are being published by the institution. The student population and workforce today, particularly in the Middle East, is so geographically mobile, whether that’s due to students moving between countries as they complete their education, or employees moving to take up new opportunities, therefore we need to ensure that a learner can gain their validated credential from an institution and be able to share it with a relevant new school, employer, government organization or network easily and securely. A solution secured by blockchain, ensures the authenticity.

Q: What are the newer technologies that can finesse learning solutions other than blockchain?

A: The word that everybody always mentions is AI. In reality, most of the learning solutions that we provide have a layer of AI or machine learning natively embedded into them. So, whether that is around surfacing relevant content or providing personalized trending content based on how a learner is engaged in the learning management systems, it’s all fairly common technology that we’re seeing now in our baseline solutions.

But now we’re looking a lot more around how we can inject AI to complete discreet activities which add value.  I love the term ‘injectable AI’ which I heard at a recent vendor partner conference as it allows a client to try out options without compromising the baseline solution. There are many examples of how AI can be injected, whether that be a plugin that helps in finessing content creation, the generation of an examination or questionnaire out of a piece of learning content, or proctoring solutions that use AI rather than just the generic ‘lockdown browser’ type solution that used to be on the market. That’s what we’re starting to look at now.

The big example that was characteristic of the use of AI a couple of years back was chatbot type functions that you integrate with your work. That’s great but not always supportive of the learning journey. But now we’re looking at what the relevant applications that we can plug into the solution so that AI will actually support the learning journey, replacing the AI vanity projects, just to say that we’ve got AI in the solution.

It’s those pieces around the edges of our core systems where we’re starting to find that we’ve got some really interesting technology that is supporting and underpinning our systems to make them different than competitors. And it’s also making the learning solutions more relevant and better for the constituents who are using it.

Q: And when it comes to the use of AI or blockchain, are you talking about systems that already have these built-in or are you talking about plug-ins? What is more common?

A: What’s more interesting now is around injectable AI. That would be where a vendor solution doesn’t build out the AI themselves. Let’s face it, AI is moving very, very fast at the moment. Some of our vendors have partnered with solutions that offer these solutions as part of the product, even though they don’t proprietarily own them, they are bundled with the software.

As far as the education institutions are concerned, they could purchase these plug-ins through us as part of their learning solution if the vendor has partnered with an AI company. There’s also an entire marketplace that allows institutions to plug AI into their solutions. It has to be the right one though. And this is one of our big offerings in XpertLearning. We’ve always had more of a consultative approach with how we solution software to our vendors and clients to give them the freedom of choice around the solutions more suitable for their needs.

Q: Can you list the top uses of AI plug-ins today that you have seen most clients ask for?
A: Certainly, the one that we’re definitely seeing more of is the use of AI in the proctoring process. This is where you’ve got a virtual classroom with learners undertaking an examination. The proctoring software has become much more sophisticated in the way it works, utilizing AI to ensure that there’s no cheating or impersonation going on and reducing the reliance on tutors freeing up their time. So that would be one of the uses that I’ve seen.

The other one that we have seen quite a lot is around where you would take AI and embed it in the course design process. This is where a tutor might generate a new course in the LMS and use AI to generate a quiz out of the learning content rather than coming up with the 25 quiz questions and answers themselves. That’s what I would consider to be targeted use of AI in the learning process rather than a chatbot in the corner that says, ‘How can I help you?’.

Q: From your experience, what are the biggest drivers that make academic institutions want to have a learning solution or an AI-based learning solution?

A: The majority of LMSs aren’t new. So, if we look at the LMSs in the Higher Ed market – the same top 4 have been in place for many years and having a learning management system in your organization as an education institution is a given.

There’s a fairly mixed use of the systems in a number of institutions. There’s a really sophisticated use of learning management systems in some of the institutions, but quite a rudimentary use in others. So there’s still loads we can do in terms of our commitment to the sector and supporting our prospects and clients. Now, we are looking more into elevating the experience both for the staff and learners to ensure that the learning experience they’re getting through their virtual learning environment is suitable for 2024.

Q: And, in your point of view, what are the biggest challenges that make some organizations have only a rudimentary use of learning solutions?

A: It’s multi-faceted. It depends on the size of an institution and can also depend on the subjects they teach, whether they do a lot of chalk-talk-type subjects, more research subjects, or lab-based work. The second reason is always around where it sits in the layer of priorities for an institution and if there is funding available to be able to do it. And the third reason that we hear is ‘time’.

Q: And how can institutions best overcome these challenges?
A: One of the best ways to overcome these challenges is where we’ve got a champion in an institution who is looking to enhance the teaching and learning experience. They might come from a different organization, it may be due to the criteria of the region they’re working in, or it may be about the competitiveness of the organization.

Q: Are there any parting words you’d like to share with our audience?

A: Not really parting words, just to voice how much I enjoy the sector I work in, improving the digital experience by introducing new technologies to organizations and supporting the associated change.   I look forward to the next stage of XpertLearning supporting the ambitious growth within the Education sector across the region.

Leverage Technology for Your Educational Institution

These were the insights we’ve gained talking to Sarah, the EdTech Director at XpertLearning. If you’re interested in learning more about how our high-tech solutions can help elevate your students’ learning experience, explore our academic solutions or schedule a demo with any of our Xperts.

According to Manpower Group, a whopping 75% of organizations globally face challenges filling roles. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. By 2030, Korn Ferry estimates that the number of unfilled jobs may reach 85.2 million worldwide. This staggering statistic is exacerbated by an increasing employee global attrition rate that has almost doubled between 2013 and 2021.

With these facts in mind, organizations need to do everything possible to attract, retain, and motivate the best talent. Here we share with you the top seven mistakes that organizations make with talent management and how you can avoid them. 

Mistake 1: Hiring with only the beginning in mind

Faced with hiring time crunches and the constant need to deliver results fast, hiring managers and HR professionals often scramble to find the best fit for open organizational vacancies. In an attempt to get results fast, there is no better hire than one with the exact education and experience a manager is looking for, often, preferably, experience in the same industry.

As tempting as this is, beware! Your new hires today are the leaders of tomorrow. You must not hire only for the capabilities the candidates demonstrate for the open roles. You must also weigh in their potential for future managerial and leadership roles in your organization. 

Moreover, experience is only one side of the coin; exposure is another. Ask yourself, would it help if you hire a candidate with relevant experience from a different industry? Would their exposure expand the organizational viewpoint and open a whole new realm of solutions?  

Mistake 2: Bulking experience instead of chunking skills

Organizations often make the mistake of hiring people based on experience, developing individuals based on roles, and promoting talent based on overall performance. As reasonable as this is, there is a catch, past performance is not necessarily an accurate indicator of future performance.

In an increasingly changing world, the experience gained yesterday may prove irrelevant for future roles and organizational demands. Moreover, since it is estimated that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years due to rapid technological change, organizations are better off chunking employees’ and candidates’ capabilities on a skill-by-skill basis, rather than experience. 

Use skills-based or competency-based assessments to assess candidates, employ skills benchmarking to develop individual personalized development plans, and use skills matching to identify possible promotion opportunities for individuals that may on the surface seem far removed from their original area of expertise, but may, in fact, have many skills in common.  

Mistake 3: Training at all the wrong times

Timing is one of the most critical factors of training effectiveness. A common mistake that organizations often make is to provide training to employees based on their current roles, with little training investment in potential future roles these employees could play. This leaves organizations usually playing catch-up in training, rather than promoting employees who are already trained and skill-ready for their new roles.

Another common timing mistake is tied to the misconception of day-long in-class training programs. Although these kinds of training programs are effective, organizations must still account for the timing of when information is needed, the regular pace at which learning needs to be reinforced, and the time employees have available for learning. In fact, in our learning and development in the UAE guide, we discovered that 77% of employees surveyed reported not having the time available for learning, making it the number one challenge facing corporate learning today.

To overcome these timing issues, organizations must consider just-in-time learning by integrating AI into already-used organizational tools and systems. They must also consider self-paced and microlearning options.

Mistake 4: Measuring performance instead of transforming performance

A common mistake organizations make with performance management systems is that they reduce it to simply a ‘system’. This mindset leads organizations to be hooked on setting objectives, filling in appraisal forms, and doing it all over again the following year. This kind of mindset often leaves actual current performance out of the equation and leaves employees feeling disenchanted. 

To overcome this issue, organizations need to approach performance management with a culture-first mindset. Performance management, in its essence, is not about setting annual objectives, but rather about providing a compass to guide everyone in the organization. 

It is also about checking in often daily or weekly about how well we all measure to that compass. Organizations that truly embrace performance management are more in the now, than in the past, and leverage their technologies and systems to keep everyone motivated towards the North Star metric.  

Mistake 5: Really boxing people in the 9-box grid

First introduced by McKinsey in 2008, the 9-box grid scoring people across two dimensions, performance and potential, has quickly become one of the most commonly used talent identification and succession planning tools in organizations worldwide. The tool places employees in one of nine boxes such as rising star, key contributor, adequate performer, etc., and is often used to identify individuals more suitable for promotions and growth opportunities.

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is to actually ‘box’ people based on the grid. Organizations must be aware that all employees deserve growth opportunities, each according to their own growing potential and increasing performance. The key here is that the grid does not tell you where someone ‘can be’ in the future; it only tells you whether they are ‘ready now’. Human potential is ever-expanding and should never be limited. 

Mistake 6: Thinking pay instead of benefits

Some organizations consider higher pay as a means to retain and motivate talent. As significant as pay is, it is still not the only way to retain your organizational talent. Employees look at the overall compensation and benefits packages when making career move decisions. These benefits could include traditionally-known benefits such as medical insurance, social insurance, and incentives. But you can also consider more modern benefits such as work-from-home options, flex hours, daycare in-house, free e-learning platform access, profit share, recognition awards, mentoring and coaching programs, gym access, and even free coffee and snacks. 

Mistake 7: Managing by attendance instead of managing by objectives

Talent management systems often come with a core HR & payroll module. They provide a great edge in automating attendance tracking, leave calculations, and payroll management. Although they enhance HR efficiency helping you focus more on the actual HR work that matters, you must not fall for the temptation of making these systems serve as a measure of employee commitment.

Attendance does not equal productivity. In fact, Stanford University research has found that productivity per hour declines sharply when people work more than 50 hours a week. After 55 hours, productivity drops so much that putting in any more hours is pointless. And, those who work 70 hours a week only get the same amount of work done as those who put in 55 hours. That being said, use these attendance tracking systems to make payroll calculations easier and faster, and measure commitment by objectives achievement instead.

Use a State-of-the-Art Talent Management System to Do It Right

These were the top seven fatal mistakes organizations make with talent management. If you’d like to do talent management right, all while saving time, cost, and effort, explore our state-of-the-art talent management solutions. And, if you’d like to know more about the future of talent management, check out our blog article on the 2023 top talent management trends.

In today’s competitive landscape, organizations face a daunting challenge: filling critical roles with the right talent. In fact, According to a study by Manpower Group, a whopping 75% of employers globally report facing challenges in filling roles. The talent shortage is real, affecting organizations worldwide, regardless of their size.

However, there’s good news—current technology trends can be powerful allies in the war for talent. Let’s explore these major trends and how they can enhance your recruitment and retention efforts.

Tech to Attract Talent

AI, big data, automation, and full-scale integrations all simplify the hiring process, helping you focus on what matters more, selecting the right talent and becoming an employer of choice. Here are some of the top benefits tech has to offer for attracting talent. 

• Customizable Pipelines: Talent acquisition software now allows you to tailor your recruitment pipeline to match your unique processes. With simple, slick drag-and-drop interfaces, managing recruitment for all your open roles becomes seamless.
• Job Board Posting: Current tech tools enable you to automatically share your job postings on global and local job search platforms, with the click of a button, increasing your job posting outreach.
• Matching recommendations: AI can sift through hundreds of CVs in a matter of seconds and score candidates’ profiles based on job requirements, to automatically evaluate candidates and facilitate your screening process.
• Candidates’ Assessment: Current tech tools can administer a wide variety of tests and automatically grade them, enabling the selection of optimal candidates with no human intervention at all.
• Candidates Profiles Enrichment: AI tools can automatically fetch data from the candidates’ social media profiles to enrich their CVs and help you make a more informed hiring decision.
• Recruitment on the Go: Mobile apps today allow you to post jobs from your mobile and follow up while on the move. They even allow candidates to apply via their mobile phones, which is a great plus, since, surprisingly, more people today apply for jobs through their phones than one would expect.
• Career Pages Easy Setup: Tech tools today enable you to create a career page for your organization with no software development expertise, thus, enhancing your employer branding effortlessly.
• Gamified Hiring Tests: Gamification is now being used to assess candidates’ personal effectiveness skills. This is an excellent way to test candidates’ soft skills as gamification provides a testing environment very close to real-life scenarios.
• Kanban boards: Tech tools provide you with Kanban boards that offer a comprehensive overview of your recruitment progress across all open roles, helping you stay organized and on top of things.

Remember, not only does embracing these tech trends simplify your hiring process, but it also positions you as an employer of choice.

Tech to Retain Talent

Attracting talent is one challenge, but retaining it requires a different playbook. With the average employee tenure at just 4.1 years, organizations must adopt fresh strategies to keep their hard-won talent. Fortunately, technology offers solutions.

• Smooth Candidate Onboarding: Current technologies help you track and manage every new hire through every step of the employment experience, from the offer letter issuance to onboarding and beyond. They also help you keep track of onboarding events such as starting dates, probation periods, or end of employment.
• Personalized Learning & Development: AI-powered learning experience platforms help conduct skills-based assessments and discover employees’ skills gaps relevant to their roles, interests, and career aspirations. Not only that but they also make learning course recommendations based on that analysis making learning easier, more objective-oriented, and more personalized.
• Data-Based Performance Management: Human capital management systems (HCMs) powered with AI and robotic process automation (RPA) automatically cascade organizational objectives from senior leadership to employees. They also can integrate with other tools to automatically aggregate performance-related data for more objective performance reviews.
• Efficient Talent Management: Current tech tools also make talent identification an easier job as they automate the whole process, generating talent maps in a matter of seconds. Empowered with this knowledge, you can spend more time planning and communicating career growth opportunities with employees, instead of spending your time crunching numbers.
• Higher Productivity & Collaboration: Current technologies make it easier for employees to complete their jobs as effectively and efficiently as possible while leveraging the collective intelligence of teams. The rise in productivity and collaboration enabled by technology can reduce work-related stress and increase overall job satisfaction.
• Flexible Working: Millennials value work-life balance. Research shows that 92% of people born between 1980 and 2000 identify flexibility as a top priority when job hunting. Current collaboration and communication tech tools make it easier for you to offer flexible work benefits to help retain millennial and Gen Z talent.
• Increased Engagement: A recent Gallup report found that employees who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. This is equal to 11% of global GDP. Current tech tools enable you to easily and quickly administer and analyze the results of employee engagement surveys. Current human capital management systems as well can automatically send notifications for managers to conduct regular check-ins to see how employees are doing.
• Smoother Employee Experience: Many HR solutions today include a single self-service portal for instant access to all HR-related information to help employees self-manage day-to-day HR tasks, such as issuing HR letters, viewing pay slips, sending leave requests, etc. This enhances the employee experience and has a positive effect on retaining talent.

Attract & Retain Talent with XpertLearning

These are some of the ways by which state-of-the-art, tech-powered talent management systems can help you attract and retain talent. If you’re interested in learning more about our talent management solutions, click HERE, or contact us at enquiries@xpertlearning.com for a demo.

Since its inception in 1999, e-learning has experienced exponential growth, expanding by a staggering 900% over the past two decades. Today, it’s a cornerstone of organizational training, with a notable 40% of Fortune 500 companies integrating e-learning into their corporate learning and development programs. The allure lies in its potential to reduce costs while simultaneously enhancing learning retention—making e-learning an indispensable component of organizational training.

However, not all e-learning solutions are created equal. Amidst the vast array of options, there exists a transformative approach: custom content. In this article, we delve into the world of custom content, exploring its myriad benefits and the diverse types available. Whether you’re a seasoned learning professional or just embarking on your organizational e-learning journey, understanding custom content is essential for maximizing the impact of your training initiatives.

What is Custom Content?

In the realm of  e-learning, the term “custom content” holds immense significance. It refers to learning programs specifically crafted or customized for your organization. On the other end of the spectrum lies “off-the-shelf content,” which has its own merits. However, custom content offers unique advantages that off-the-shelf solutions cannot match.

Benefits of Custom Content Solutions

Being tailored to your organization, custom content solutions provide you with a unique list of benefits you would not want to miss out on.

• Laser-Focused Learning

Custom content is like a bespoke suit tailored to fit your organization perfectly. Unlike generic off-the-shelf solutions, which may include irrelevant material, custom content zeroes in on your specific learning objectives. It’s designed with precision, ensuring that every piece aligns with your organizational goals. As a result, learners benefit from content that is relevant, concise, objective-focused, time saving, and directly applicable to their roles. 

• Organization-Specific Relevance

Imagine attending a training session where the examples and case studies are drawn from your own workplace. That’s the power of custom content. Unlike off-the-shelf solutions, which offer generic scenarios, custom content allows you to incorporate real-life situations from your organization. Whether it’s industry-specific processes, company culture, or unique challenges, learners engage more deeply when they see familiar contexts. This relevance boosts attention, retention, and ultimately drives behavioural change on the job.

• Addressing Specific Use Cases

Custom content shines brightest in specific scenarios where organization-specific knowledge is needed. While off-the-shelf learning materials can upskill employees, they fall short when it comes to conveying your company’s core values or fostering awareness of organizational culture. These are precisely the situations where custom content excels. Whether it’s introducing new policies, explaining intricate processes, or reinforcing ethical guidelines, custom content ensures that your message resonates authentically with your organization.

To In-House or To Out-Source?

As organizations embrace e-learning, a pivotal question arises: Should we build an in-house team of custom content developers or entrust the task to external experts? The decision carries significant implications, and understanding the key factors is essential.

1. Workload Considerations

• In-House Developers: If your content demands are substantial—multiple programs per year, intricate modules, and frequent updates—an in-house developer may be the right choice. Their dedicated focus ensures alignment with your organization’s unique needs.
• Outsourcing: For sporadic content requirements or uncertain workloads, outsourcing offers flexibility. Start small, gauge demand, and scale accordingly. Consider external providers when the workload doesn’t warrant a full-time hire.

2. Cost Analysis

• Outsourced Development Cost: Crafting tailored content involves expenses, from design to implementation. Compare this against the cost of the full-time hire alternative.
• Full-Time Employee Cost: Weigh the cost of hiring an in-house developer against outsourcing. Consider factors like salaries, benefits, and overhead. It all depends on the estimated workload.

3. Time Efficiency

• In-House Advantage: Having an exclusive in-house developer seems efficient, but it doesn’t always translate to faster turnarounds. Complex projects may still take time.
• Outsourcing Team Advantage: Outsourcing grants access to a diverse team. Multiple developers can collaborate simultaneously, accelerating project completion.

4. Expertise Dilemma

• Outsourced Expertise: External developers often bring specialized skills and broader industry exposure. Their fresh perspectives enhance content quality.
• In-House Insight: Your internal team knows your organization intimately—its culture, processes, and unique challenges. This context helps especially with programs that require insights into the organization’s unique knowledge and culture.

There is no right answer to the in-house vs. outsourcing question. The decision hinges on your organization’s specific context. Prioritize factors like workload, cost, time, and expertise, and make the decision that aligns best with your learning programs’ goals.

Types of Custom Content

As you navigate the decision between in-house development and outsourcing for custom content, understanding the diverse types of content becomes crucial. Each type serves specific learning needs, ensuring a tailored approach to your organization’s training programs.

• Whiteboard Explainer Videos

Whiteboard explainer videos are videos that mimic the experience of a teacher explaining on a whiteboard but in a video format. These videos are ideal for explaining concepts especially ones that include branching and mind mapping.

• Animated Videos

These are videos that create stories by presenting characters and scenes. They leverage storytelling as a learning technique and represent audio-visual content in a concise and compelling manner. They are ideal for conveying concepts in action, real-life scenarios, and case studies. Most importantly, they are an excellent format for learning that sticks!

• Infographic Animated Videos

Infographic videos are motion graphic videos that are highly packed with facts, data, numbers, charts, and all other kinds of statistics. They are an ideal choice if you are aiming to explain, educate, or inform your learners of concepts that rely heavily on information.

• Kinetic Typography Videos

These are videos that feature words but with a touch of typography art, exquisite use of colour and movement, and a coupling of proper music and voiceover. These videos are ideal for conveying value-related behaviours, principles, or any set of rules or procedures you would like to disseminate.

• Page Turners

Page-turners are simple self-paced online programs that feature a linear sequence of slides the learner can go back and forth through. They are ideal for basic information transfer and for communicating simple and straightforward concepts. Page turners are commonly used for organization-wide mandatory programs.

• Rapidly Authored Programs

This is a super-quick solution for your immediate training needs. If you already have an impressive library of training programs in slide format, with rapid authoring, you can transform your conventional but informative slides into digital programs that help you make the transition to e-learning fast. They are ideal if you want to build on what you already have and want quick results.

Get Custom Content Solutions for Your Organization

Custom content isn’t just about creating learning materials; it’s about crafting experiences. By tailoring content to your organization’s unique context, you empower learners to thrive. If you’re interested in learning more about how custom content can help your organization or are interested in viewing a live demo, you can visit our custom content page.

Since the inception of the tech industry, the industry’s growth has been on the rise. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report shows that over 85% of organizations surveyed believe that increased adoption of new and frontier technologies will most likely drive transformation in their organizations in the next five years. The same report states that more than 75% of companies are seeking to adopt technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and AI in the next five years. 

But do organizations’ talent forces have the necessary skills to capitalize on these technologies? To overcome this hurdle, organizations are investing in upskilling their workforce’s digital and tech skills.  However, the vast array of available tech competencies can be overwhelming. This article aims to demystify the tech skills landscape, empowering you to make informed decisions for your team’s and organization’s success. 

The Tech Skills Landscape

In today’s tech-driven world, an abundance of tech certifications exists, showcasing the vast spectrum of skills individuals can acquire. However, amidst this plethora of options, it’s crucial to recognize that each skill serves a distinct purpose. Therefore, the key lies in understanding what these skills empower you to achieve. Here, we explore the top broad categories of tech skills:

1). Mobile App Development: 

Mobile app development skills encompass a range of abilities that enable you to create, enhance, and maintain mobile applications that can be downloaded from any mobile phone’s app store. 

Although mobile app developers possess the same skills as backend developers such as framework design, database management, API integration, etc., there are some additional skills they must have to be able to create user-intuitive functioning applications. These skills are:

• Mobile Platform Knowledge: While web developers primarily focus on web browsers, mobile developers must understand the intricacies of iOS (for Apple devices) and Android (for Google devices). 
• User Interface (UI) Design for Small Screens: Mobile developers need to have the skills necessary to create interfaces optimized for smaller screens. Such skills include considerations of touch gestures, screen resolutions, and responsiveness.
• App Store Guidelines and Submission Process: Mobile developers must know the guidelines for preparing their apps for submission on the App Store (Apple) and Google Play Store (Android).
• Offline Functionality: Mobile apps often need to function offline. Mobile developers need the skills to implement local storage, caching, and synchronization mechanisms.
• Hardware Integration: Mobile apps utilize device features like GPS, camera, accelerometer, and gyroscope. Developers must understand how to access and use these features.
• Performance Optimization: Mobile apps run on resource-constrained devices. Developers optimize memory usage, minimize battery drain, and ensure smooth performance.
• App Security: Mobile developers must have the skills to address security concerns specific to mobile platforms to protect user data, handle authentication, and prevent vulnerabilities.
• Cross-Platform Development: If you would like to build apps for both iOS and Android simultaneously, you may need to learn the use of cross-platform tools like React Native or Flutter.

2). Data Science and Analytics: 

These skills enable you to generate valuable insights from big amounts of data faster and with higher accuracy. They are useful in business analysis, scientific studies, and AI solutions. Many skills can help you excel in this specialization such as:

• Programming Languages: These languages such as Python and R are used for data manipulation, analysis, and modeling. 
• Statistics and Probability: Understanding statistical concepts like linear regression, hypothesis testing, and probability distributions helps you build accurate models and draw meaningful conclusions.
• Data Wrangling and Database Management: You will need these skills to clean, organize, extract, transform, and load data into suitable formats for analysis.
• Machine Learning and Deep Learning: Applying machine learning algorithms helps you predict outcomes, classify data, and uncover patterns.
• Data Visualization: Mastery of tools such as Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Tableau helps you communicate the data more clearly.
• Big Data Technologies: Familiarity with tools like Hadoop, Spark, and NoSQL databases helps you handle large-scale data.

3). Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence:

Machine learning skills enable you to program systems to use the insights attained from data analysis to make predictions; artificial intelligence, on the other hand, involves programming these systems to take actions according to these predictions. To succeed in this field, you need a mix of mathematical and technical skills, such as:

• Probability and Statistics: These form the foundation for many ML algorithms.
• Linear Algebra: It will help you understand transformations and operations on data.
• Graph Theory: It is relevant for certain AI applications.
• Programming Languages: The most widely used in AI are Python, Java, C++, Julia, and R.
• Neural Network Architecture: You will need to understand different architectures and their applications.
• Deep Learning: You should familiarize yourself with deep neural networks and techniques like backpropagation.
• Big Data and Distributed Computing: These will help you handle large datasets efficiently.

4). Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing enables you to deploy applications, databases, and services on cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Whether you need more storage, computing power, or bandwidth, these cloud platforms enable you to scale your server usage up or down on demand. With these platforms, you rent server space instead of owning it, which enables flexible scaling with less cost and more efficiency. 

Here is a list of the top skills you need to succeed in cloud computing:

• Programming Languages: Python, JavaScript, and R are foundational for cloud software development. Proficiency in these languages allows you to build and manage applications effectively.
• Cloud Service Platforms: You need to understand the differences between the major platforms to advise on the best platform for any application. The major platforms are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. 
• Database Management: You need to master cloud databases such as NoSQL, relational databases, and data warehousing to manipulate data efficiently.
• Linux: Coding on Linux, an open-source operating system, helps you work with cloud infrastructure.
• Security Focus: Understanding encryption, access controls, and secure practices is essential so that you can protect organizational data.
• Networking and Infrastructure: Learning about virtual networks, subnets, and load balancers is vital for cloud architecture.
• Automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Using tools like Terraform or CloudFormation helps you automate infrastructure provisioning.

5). Cybersecurity:

Considering that 66% of organizations reported being targeted by ransomware in 2023 alone, cybersecurity skills are essential for safeguarding digital systems and data and protecting them from threats. There are many technical competencies that cybersecurity professionals need to have. Here are some of the key skills:

• Scripting: Scripting with Python and PowerShell allows you to efficiently analyze data and respond to security incidents.
• Controls and Frameworks: It will help you to have an awareness of the common cybersecurity frameworks like NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), ISO (International Organization for Standardization), CIS (Center for Information Security), and SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2).
• Intrusion Detection: Tools such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), and IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems) help you monitor network activity. 
• Incident Response: You must know how to handle security incidents promptly, covering investigation, containment, and recovery.
• Cloud Security: You need to learn how to secure cloud environments to protect data, manage access controls, and address cloud-specific threats.
• Networking and System Administration: Understanding network protocols, firewalls, and system configurations helps you secure infrastructure.
• Malware Prevention and Analysis: You need to know how to recognize the different types of malware, analyze their behavior, and implement preventive measures.
• Risk Management: You need to know how to assess risks, prioritize vulnerabilities, and develop mitigation strategies.
• Encryption and Cryptography: You must know encryption algorithms, digital signatures, and secure communication protocols.

6). Networking:

Computer networking skills are essential for designing, implementing, and maintaining efficient communication systems between different devices. Here are some of the technical competencies that network engineers need to possess: 

• Linux: As a network engineer, you will use Linux in installing and configuring servers to provide email and internet access, supporting system administration for Linux servers, and implementing Linux and Windows solutions for business applications.
• Network Troubleshooting: This skill enables you to identify and resolve issues with computer networks. 
• Ethernet: Understanding ethernet protocols, cable types, and network topologies helps you in configuring and troubleshooting local area networks (LANs).
• TCP/IP: You need to grasp the layers, addressing, and routing of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
• Switches and Routers: Network engineers must know how switches and routers function.
• Network Devices: Knowledge of firewalls, load balancers, access points, and other network hardware.
• Network Infrastructure: You must have a grasp of network architecture, protocols, and components, including WANs (wide area networks) and VLANs (virtual LANs).

Level Up the Tech Skills of Your Organization

This was a high-level dissection of the tech skills landscape. The tech environment is in constant evolution. If you’re interested in keeping your talent force abreast of all the latest tech updates, upskill them now. To learn more, Click Here.