4 ways L&D leaders are using AI skills intelligence

How much do you really know about the skills in your business? I don’t just mean ‘Did everyone score 80%+ in their annual training assessment?’ or ‘How good do the sales team say they are at communicating with their customers?’. I mean, how do critical business skills such as active listening or strategic vision really show up in day-to-day work, away from gut feeling, biased self-assessments or adhoc peer reviews?

Understanding the skills in play in your business, and how they’re changing, is tightly linked to the effectiveness of your training. For instance, did you know that around 50% of companies don’t know if their training investments are successful? This is a shocking statistic, meaning that many businesses could be wasting huge sums of money on learning programmes that just aren’t getting the right results. This lack of visibility into application of skills in the workplace leaves us with a lot of questions – and potentially a big L&D bill with nothing to show for it. That’s a gap we’re determined to close, and we believe that AI skills intelligence is the answer.

I shared my take on why it’s time to take the next step in AI skills intelligence at our Helix launch event back in July, but if you weren’t able to join us, I’m pleased to share those thoughts with you here and now. Watch the highlights of my keynote below, or read on for my full thoughts:

How Helix works

A quick refresher for those of you who may be new to Helix:

Helix is designed to turn up to your virtual meetings, whether that’s a brainstorming session, a one-on-one meeting with your manager or a team standup, just like another attendee. It listens, analyses and translates your interactions into actionable insights. For the first time ever, you’re not dependent on gut feeling or biased assumptions when it comes to assessing skills – instead, you can finally get your hands on real data, helping you start painting a true picture of your skill set.

Think of it as a smarter version of the meeting assistants we’re all familiar with, but with a laser focus on skills. 

The skills we’re focusing on right now…

Right now, Helix focuses on analysing soft skills, what we call our Core 9 soft skills. These cover three key areas:

• How you show up to work – accountability, active listening, change management
• How you grow and lead – coachability, coaching, communication
• How you make decisions – growth mindset, results focus, strategic vision

But this really is just the start – we have a lot of new skills in the works, so you’ll be able to track many more soft skills over time with Helix. We’re also working on allowing you to add your own skills to your own instance of Helix, meaning you can measure exactly what matters to you and your business.

The 4 Helix use cases

From our early access period and conversations with dozens more L&D leaders, we’ve found that there are four key ways businesses intend to use Helix. 

Let’s start with 1 and 2. These reflect how organisations are already using Helix, and where we are right now:

1. As a leadership and ROI aid

It’s no secret that L&D hasn’t traditionally been great at measuring the impact of learning. We might be doing truly groundbreaking work, but without proper measurement and metrics in place, it’s impossible to understand the real ROI of our L&D programmes.

Helix changes that. It gives business leaders a unique insight into the skills available across the business, as well as an understanding of how learning initiatives impact ROI. Instead of hoping, or assuming, that a £100,000 training investment moved the needle, leaders can finally know how much it contributed to real behaviour change on the job, whether that’s creating better communicators, a stronger focus on results or a more accountable workforce.

2. As a personal development tool

We’ve been hearing that learners themselves are keen to discover their own strengths and growth opportunities, and Helix allows them to do just that – no biased self-assessment surveys required!

Helix gives individuals an insight into what they’re bringing to the table, as well as any blind spots in their soft skills which could be hindering them at work. This is useful not just to improve performance, but also for things like career progression, performance reviews and securing new opportunities at work. After all, if you can prove that you have a strong strategic vision, you’re results focused and you hold yourself accountable, that’s a great sign that you might be ready to step up into a management role.

We’ve also spoken to several customers who are looking at doing something a little different. 3 and 4 show where customers are interested in taking Helix, and what we’re working on supporting next:

3. As a QA and coaching assessment tool

Some organisations are using Helix to measure the coaching skills of their actual coaches, as well as engaging in ‘train the trainer’ programmes – in other words, are our trainers compliant with our standards? Are they giving learners good quality training experiences? 

Measuring and tracking skills like coaching, communication and change management ensures organisations can feel confident that their coaches are performing at the required level.

4. As a talent development tool

Last but not least, organisations are using Helix as a talent development tool. With Helix, HR and hiring teams can identify talent and talent gaps across the business, build succession plans and ensure that rising stars are being utilised in the best possible way by the business.

For instance, the talent team may spot that certain employees have strong active listening and communication skills, which could indicate that they’re well suited to customer-facing roles. Instead of automatically looking for external hires, they may choose to focus on supporting internal employees to make the most of their skills in roles which play to their strengths.

See the 4 Helix use cases in action

I’m incredibly proud of what our team has achieved, and excited about where we go next. Helix will only get better with time – with a huge amount of thanks to the excellent feedback from our 5app community.

The beauty of an AI-based solution like Helix is that it will grow with our customers, and when it comes to more unique use cases, we’re all ears!