Retorio Blog

What is AI coaching? 5 Reasons Why You Need it

Written by Anna Schosser | 10.01.2024

2023 was the year that artificial intelligence (AI) witnessed remarkable advancements. From developing personalized coaching and delivering personalized insights to developing coaching sessions that feature a conversational AI coach, 2023 was a pivotal year for integrating AI into various aspects of the business landscape.

As we now have entered 2024, the horizon for AI appears to be even more promising, with further innovation and advanced technologies to be unleashed.

 

The AI market is projected to grow by 33% in 2024 with the AI market size projected to grow at least 120% year over year. 
 

One of these advancements is AI coaching. From coaching employees to reach their professional goals and develop new skills to generating personal development plans, several organizations across industries have stepped away from the traditional coaching approaches.

Just like the saying: it's out with the old, and in with the new, this blog post will explain to you why you need AI coaching and what it is all about.

 

What's in this post:

 

What is AI coaching?

AI coaching refers to the use of artificial intelligence technologies to develop and provide personalized coaching support and guidance for individuals in their professional and personal development. AI coaching leverages machine learning to provide a more customizable and scalable approach to employee development that includes tailored feedback, recommendations for continuous improvement, and learning plans.

AI coaching enables organizations to help employees achieve their short and long-term career goals and overcome challenges effectively and efficiently. Moreover, companies are able to benefit from AI tools that will help them streamline the coaching process and achieve desired training outcomes much faster.

Essentially, companies use AI technology to gain valuable insights into the training and coaching needs of each individual. Organizations can then quickly identify the strengths and areas for improvement of each employee and see how they can effectively nurture the talents and bridge skill gaps for an overall improved employee experience.

What is a conversational AI coach? 

A conventional AI coach is a form of Artificial Intelligence that can mimic human communication. Conversational AI is powered by the usual branches of AI which is a combination of Natural Language Processing (NLP), foundation models, and machine learning (ML). 

Large volumes of data, such as text and audio, are used to train conversational AI systems to mimic human communication. The data is utilized to train the algorithm to recognize and comprehend human language. The technology then uses this knowledge and information to interact naturally with humans. 

It is continually learning from its interactions and increasing the quality of its responses and decision-making over time, becoming more accurate and reliable as more data continues to be processed and analyzed. 

Some examples of conversational AI are the following: 

  • Chatbots
  • Virtual assistants
  • Speech recognition software
  • Generative AI agents
  • Speech recognition software 

 

AI-powered coaching embodies the learning and development (L&D) trends for 2024 which focuses on making the learning experience for employees a simple, but valuable one. 

 

Why you need an AI coaching program

The pursuit of personal and professional development is a continuous road for everyone. The road is often filled with challenges and milestones to reach that can sometimes seem like an ongoing struggle for most.

However, the world of training and coaching does not have to be all that difficult. Organizations should be able to improve their overall leadership style, help employees develop positive habits in the workplace, make better-informed decisions, and improve overall employee well-being. There's more to it. Here are five reasons why you shouldn't wait any longer to implement AI-powered coaching in your company:

Develop personalized development journeys

A large part of an organization's success lies within the skills and competencies of each employee. Therefore, companies must nurture these talents efficiently and help them to move forward in their professional development.

The question, however, is how can companies do this. The answer is AI coaching. When looking into achieving your desired outcomes whether it is the number of calls your sales teams achieve within a month or how you can enhance your leaders' leadership skills to improve employee engagement and retention, finding a coach that can target each individual's specific needs can be a challenge.

You can think of AI coaching as having an outfit that is measured perfectly to your size. AI coaching allows each member of the team to receive targeted training based on data-driven insights that highlight each employee's unique strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, and preferences.

Moreover, AI coaching continuously optimizes each employee's growth trajectory, which saves you the time and resources that go into traditionally measuring employee performance, and learning needs.

Continuous learning culture

Cultivating a company culture of continuous learning is vital, especially as the world of L&D continues to evolve and change in 2024. To stay ahead of the curve, and keep your competitive edge, AI coaching programs can provide ongoing, real-time feedback to every training and keep employees driven to achieve their goals and be open to continuously learning new skills.

A motivated team will generate top results. Therefore, AI coaching can help you keep your employees on top of their game by providing tailored training recommendations that are catered to their career goals and professional development. This encourages employees to embrace a mindset of continuous improvement.

Moreover, AI coaching facilitates goal setting by helping employees set SMART goals and track their learning objectives and performance progress. This process allows individuals to establish achievable and measurable milestones, and monitor their improvement over time.

Not only does this allow your employees to see how they are progressing professionally, but it also encourages a sense of accountability and motivation which in turn, cultivates a culture where employees continuously seek opportunities for learning and growth.

Increase efficiency and scalability

The difference between traditional coaching methods versus. AI coaching is that AI coaching automates tasks, minimizes errors, and uses data to be the starting point of creating all training experiences, meaning that AI coaching analyzes large amounts of data to provide personalized guidance and coaching to each employee based on their unique needs and where they are in their development journey.

AI coaching takes on a targeted approach to ensuring that organizations can extend their benefits across diverse teams and accommodate the developmental needs of an entire workforce without wasting unnecessary time and overspending resources.

Instead of having a human coach, AI coaching sessions use an artificially intelligent coach that helps employees bring out their true potential through conversations based on real-life situations that reflect circumstances that employees deal with in their respective roles.

The automation of this coaching routine allows employees to flexibly fit coaching into their work routine and enables organizations to level up employee experience and development in a cost-effective and scalable manner.

Make better data-driven decisions

Another reason why you need AI coaching is that it empowers you to make more informed decisions driven by data. The data generates valuable insights from the analysis of employee performance data and screens the learning patterns and styles of each employee.

Through its advanced technologies, AI coaching helps organizations by extracting actionable information to identify learning and development trends, pinpointing skill gaps, and evaluating the effectiveness of coaching sessions.

What's more, the data-driven approach that comes with AI coaching enables you to align your coaching efforts with your overarching business goals so that each employee can successfully contribute to the success of the organization.

By leveraging the power of data, AI coaching facilitates a more strategic and impact approach to employee development and ensures that all efforts are grounded in evidence and tailored to each individual's needs in the workforce and fit into where they are in their development journey.

Accessibility and flexibility

AI coaching can be accessed from anywhere in the world, on any smart device that has a working WiFi. Especially in this day and age where people are often traveling, or on the go, it can be hard to pin down human coaches and have coaching sessions take place within the office.

As the hybrid work model is taking the lead in 2024 and for the years to come, organizations need to take that into account and find ways for their employees to still take part in coaching and stay consistent on their growth journey.

This year, it is time to say goodbye to in-office training that may not suit every individual's work schedule. Remote employees may prefer to complete their coaching sessions online, while other employees would prefer to schedule their coaching sessions when it suits them.

Being able to provide such accessibility and flexibility with AI coaching is important if you are looking into bringing your employee's development journey two steps forward instead of one. Think of it like this: the simpler the coaching process is, the more motivated and driven your employees will be to bring forth their professional development.

 

The coaching industry is evolving as quickly as modern technology does. Therefore, the future of learning and development will focus more on the human experience, with an emphasis on experience.

To stay ahead of the curve and keep your competitive edge, implementing AI-driven processes to elevate your development and training programs is key to not only cultivating top-performing employees but also retaining top talent.

Are you searching for a coaching and training platform that offers personalized development plans and coaching powered by Artificial Intelligence? Retorio's behavioral intelligence platform has it covered. From building your own AI coaching platform within minutes to targeting the skill gaps and needs of each of them, Retorio's AI-powered platform harnesses the power of behavioral intelligence to make learning and development effective and scalable.

Retorio's AI coaching platform provides every individual with an accurate reflection of their strengths and areas for improvement and provides customized training exercises that cater to their unique learning path. 
 
 

Your ticket to higher coaching completion rates and improved employee engagement and performance rates await you. Try Retorio's AI-powered platform for yourself and implement training that matters for your business's success.

 

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