Navigating learning and development challenges in a world of AI
The rise of artificial intelligence is creating demand for new skills and reshaping the way investment firms deliver learning and development programs.
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the investment industry presents a number of challenges to the co-ordination of learning and development.
Talent development teams recognize that individuals are quickly becoming accustomed to using AI tools in their daily lives, even if their employers have not yet formally introduced them in the workplace. At the same time, the pace of evolution of AI means that it is not easy for L&D managers to keep learning content current.
CFA Institute’s discussions with employers found that AI is influencing the learning landscape in two principal ways: AI skills are increasingly in demand, while AI is also being deployed as a tool to enhance learning.
Limits to self-teaching
While employees are frequently developing AI skills themselves through experimentation with user-friendly offerings, such as large language model (LLM) chatbots, they and their organizations are also likely to benefit from a more structured approach.
Employers tell us that staff are increasingly engaging in self-directed learning by using chatbots to answer just-in-time questions and to draft code. This is helping to increase knowledge quickly and in a targeted way.
But deeper learning may be needed to master aspects such as prompt engineering or data analysis. These are skills that will be increasingly needed to ensure that organizations are unlocking the full potential of AI.
Strategy still vital
At the same time, AI itself can increasingly be used to assess where employees’ other skills gaps exist, as well as to create personalized learning journeys.
In a recent roundtable discussion with top employers in Malaysia, our business development team found that a major challenge for companies lay in upskilling non-technical employees in technical areas such as data science and machine learning, while also developing strong analytical skills for interpreting AI outputs among more technically oriented staff.
The analytical and strategic skills are vital to ensure that AI use is aligned with business goals. Firms also noted that it was increasingly important to instruct employees in the ethics of AI use, to ensure responsible practices.
Collaborate, don’t compete
One recommendation to emerge from the discussions we held with employers was to use training to foster a culture of collaboration with AI tools, to enable staff to understand better how to work alongside them.
Such an approach would also help to counter some of the other challenges that employers reported as obstacles to deploying AI successfully, including cultural resistance among staff because of fears of being made redundant or simply failing to cope with the pace of change.
Explore AI in Asset Management: Tools, Applications, and Frontiers from CFA Institute Research Foundation and CFA Institute Policy Center.
Ways to respond
Employers can use AI effectively in a number of ways to improve the L&D experience for staff:
- Encourage adoption of AI use for self-directed continuous on-the-job learning
- Build AI-driven learning pathways that are directly appropriate to a specific role, and integrate them into the working routine
- Use AI to provide richer and more personalized assessments of skills and knowledge…
- …and use generative AI to feed this information back to employees in a digestible and less confrontational way
This article is part of our series featuring insights from investment management firms on transforming L&D strategies. Discover how industry leaders are tackling talent development challenges and building capabilities for the future.
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