Training Employees for the Future with Digital Humans

By Nick Sokolich, SVP of Sales, UneeQ

Technology advancements have sped up the need for professionals across industries to learn new skills. According to an article from the Harvard Business Review, the average half-life of skills is now less than five years, and in some tech fields, it's two and a half. The pace at which this technological change is occurring is faster than businesses can train their employees.

A survey from Gartner found that 64% of managers surveyed don't think their employees could keep up with the future skill needs. In the same study, 70% of employees said they have not mastered the skills they need for their jobs today.

Organizations must invest in reskilling initiatives to prepare their workforce for the future. Regrettably, most businesses today are not satisfied with the results of employee training programs, whether they are onboarding new personnel or retraining current ones. With the technological revolution pressing onward, it's important to examine why traditional training methods are so ineffective.

Traditional Learning Can't Prepare People for the Future of Work

Legacy training methods like webinars, pre-recorded videos, and online courses have a fundamental flaw. They don't allow employees to apply the material in a practical scenario in real time. As a result, employees don't remember most of the content they learn.

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In the 1880s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that an hour after learning ends, people forget around 50% of new information. Within 24 hours, they'll forget 70%, and after a week they won't remember 90%. This phenomenon is concerning — especially when U.S. companies spent over $100 billion on traditional learning solutions in 2022.

Not only is ineffective training expensive, but it can also increase employee turnover. People understand that the world is changing, and they need new skills to stay relevant as professionals. If their employer cannot prepare them for this future, they will search elsewhere, which, according to Gallup, will cost businesses anywhere from one-half to two times that employee's annual salary.

New Challenges Require New Technology

Businesses can empower their workforces to excel by retiring outdated training methods and adopting new strategies driven by AI digital human technology. Digital humans are real-time intelligent interfaces built to guide, teach, and speak to people in real time.

Digital humans leverage a host of advanced technologies, large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, and intelligent AI orchestrators, among them. They also use unique techniques like kinesthetic learning, or “learning by doing,” alongside on-screen visuals to better illustrate more complicated topics.

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Note that digital humans are not like traditional chatbots that follow structured dialog trees. Instead, they can respond dynamically to the employee's inputs (speech or text) to ensure interactions are as lifelike as possible. Best-in-class digital humans will also use guardrails and other technology to prevent conversations from wandering off-topic or into inappropriate territories.

The Advantages of Training with Digital Humans

By allowing employees to apply their training in real-world scenarios, digital humans help them keep more information in a shorter amount of time, reducing traditional training timelines significantly. As a result, businesses will spend less money and time reskilling personnel.

The training possibilities with digital humans are vast, helping employees learn to use new technologies and systems. In a sales setting, personnel can practice using new generative AI-powered customer service tools while a digital human pretends to be a customer. Digital humans could also help engineers in the automotive space learn how to use machine-learning solutions or operate 3D printing machines.

Moreover, the role-play scenarios digital humans generate for learning are stress-free opportunities for people to practice new skills without the fear of making mistakes that would normally carry real-world consequences.

Plus, digital humans, as teachers, never get frustrated with students, nor do they grow tired of repeating the same thing over and over again. These qualities will remove anxiety for employees when learning new skills.

The early results have been very positive. While an average training effectiveness score for traditional, text-based learning of 78% isn't terrible, digital human roleplay has an average effectiveness of 95%.

More impressively, while only 44% of people have high (near to total recollection) of information delivered through traditional training, digital humans almost double this recollection rate to 82%, helping new skills stick.

Reskilling at Scale

Historically, reskilling programs require considerable time and cost investments from companies including hiring outside agencies and lengthy “train the trainer” programs before teams can even get started. Let's face it, businesses do not have time, resources, and endless training budgets as luxuries. Digital humans are a cost-effective means of reskilling employees at scale — at any time and in any language — to prepare them for the unique challenges of the future.

About the author:

Nick Sokolich is the Global Head of Sales at UneeQ, where he spearheads digital transformation efforts to enhance customer experiences through innovative technology. With a passion for driving meaningful change, Nick has led the successful deployment of UneeQ's Digital Human Platform across some of the world's largest enterprises. His strategic leadership in digital adoption has consistently delivered impactful, immediate, and effective results, positioning him as a key influencer in customer-focused digital solutions.

Before joining UneeQ, Nick served as Channel Manager at Zeacom, an Enghouse Interactive company, for over five years. In this role, he managed the company's business partner network, promoting Zeacom's Unified Communications solutions to enhance productivity across contact centers and enterprises. He was responsible for educating partners and clients on the benefits of Zeacom's communications suite, driving success in integrating platforms like Avaya, Cisco, NEC, and Microsoft Lync.