The best organizations are the ones that leverage the latest technology to stay ahead of the curve, and Bayer certainly fit that description. As one of the world’s leading healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, Bayer is an innovator in all aspects – including employee L&D.
We spoke to Kristina Scherb, Workforce Transformation and Skills Strategy Professional at Bayer, in depth specifically about what Bayer learned from their successful deployment of AI-powered roleplays for workplace communication training.
You can catch the full conversation here, but if you’re short on time we’ve handpicked the key takeaways for you right below. Dive in to find out how AI-powered roleplays can make an impact at scale.
Just-in-Time Learning Beats Long, Scheduled Training
When it comes to L&D, one of the biggest challenges is convincing busy employees that it’s worth taking time away from their desks. That challenge quickly starts looking insurmountable if the learning activity you want them to take part in is a one-hour mandatory training session with a boring slide deck front-and-center.
On the other hand, bite-sized, just-in-time learning activities – such as a 10-minute AI roleplay session – is a much easier sell. Firstly, it’s interactive, engaging, and fun, which is everything an old-school training session isn’t. Secondly, a shorter, flexible activity can be squeezed in between meetings, done on a lunch break, or during an employee’s more quiet period.
As Kristina told us, this flexibility “is an important factor for scalability because it gives employees the possibility to use the tool for even just a couple of minutes. They don’t need a full hour blocked out in their calendar to do training. Instead, they can do it from their desktop, use it to prepare for (or debrief) meetings, or quickly work on improving their communication skills”.
AI Fits Into Blended Learning Strategies
However, it’s important to remember that just because AI is new on the scene and is quickly showing its effectiveness, it doesn’t mean you have to throw everything you’ve previously built away.
As Bayer has shown, you can make space for AI-powered training (such as AI roleplays) alongside other, more tried-and-trusted learning methods like workshops. In fact, reducing your overall reliance on presentations and workshops can make the ones you do run more effective, since they’re not being overused.
Kristina explained that by taking a “blended learning approach that helps everyone work effectively”, and using AI roleplays in combination with workshops and other education initiatives, Bayer was able to solve the workplace communication issues it was facing as a result of a wave of new hires from across the world.
Build AI Training Based on Real Scenarios, Not Hypotheticals
In order for your AI training to get meaningful buy-in from employees, they need to be able to trust that it’s relevant to their role. As we mentioned earlier, time spent away from the desk is valuable – so if the AI training isn’t relevant, employees won’t see the value in taking part.
How did Bayer tackle this issue of relevance? By ensuring that every AI roleplay scenario was based on or inspired by a real communication challenge faced by an actual Bayer employee. Kristina hosted workshops where she “brought everyone together to discuss as a team what kind of situations were challenging for employees and how [they] can overcome them”.
Kristina then used the findings from this workshop to construct bespoke AI roleplay scenarios within VirtualSpeech that tackled the very same situations that Bayer employees were finding difficult to navigate.
As a result, Bayer’s employees felt that the AI training was targeted, relevant, and designed to meet their exact learning needs – improving buy-in and adoption rates.
Psychological Safety Reduces Employees’ Training Anxiety
Another common obstacle to communication training is employee anxiety. Roleplaying with and receiving feedback from a human peer can be intimidating or provoke shyness or a sense of awkwardness. AI roleplays helped Bayer overcome this thanks to the psychological safety their controlled environment creates.
Employees train with and receive feedback from non-judgmental AI avatars in an immersive, safe space within the VirtualSpeech platform. Kristina explained that this approach means that employees are “given a very safe space to practice. It’s just for you and the avatar, and you can go there as often as you wish and can practice as often as you like, for as long as you like”.
When employees feel safe and free from judgement, they’re more likely to engage with the training in a productive manner and achieve their learning goals.
Great Pilot Programs Build Excitement at Scale
The proof of a successful initiative? When more and more people are clamoring to take part as time goes on. What began for Bayer as a project to leverage AI for intercultural workplace communication training has since expanded to include AI-powered negotiation training for procurement teams and AI-driven interview practice for employees changing job roles internally.
Kristina told us that over time, her team “received more and more demand to create AI roleplays for other parts of the organization, because their potential is enormous. [She] could tell that it was working for a lot of people, the interest was there, and it filled the demand for learning and upskilling [at Bayer].”
What this means is that word spread across Bayer about the power of VirtualSpeech’s AI roleplays and resulted in more widespread adoption after the initial project led by Kristina and her team.
Want To Learn More?
This is just a taste of what Kristina explored in our hour-long conversation about Bayer’s use of VirtualSpeech AI roleplays for workplace communication training.
Want to learn more? You can find the full conversation replay here or speak to one of our team about how you can successfully implement VirtualSpeech into your organization just like Bayer did.
