HRTech Interview with Nick Hernandez, Co-founder and CEO at 360Learning

Hi Nick, please tell us about the latest leap into the world of AI certification for L&D.

Our new AI certification for L&D is designed to help L&D professionals understand how to use AI and leverage the technology to achieve high-quality and personalized results. We’ve been hearing from L&D teams that they have been using AI in their day-to-day roles but often find generative AI-produced content to be low-quality and generic. By helping L&D teams to understand the technology and how it works, particularly how to use prompts which have become the critical interface for engaging with generative AI, we want to ensure L&D professionals can be a part of the AI revolution.

How do AI certifications actually serve the industry?

Our AI certification for L&D will teach L&D professionals how AI works, the potential risks and how to master AI in their daily work. This also includes how to use and create prompts and gain access to curate prompt templates. All this will help L&D teams to develop the skills and perspective necessary to stay on the cutting edge of the L&D industry.

What are your thoughts on the role of upskilling the existing workforce in the organization with AI-focused L&D programs?

It’s very important for everyone to understand AI and how to leverage it in their work. We believe that AI can facilitate collaborative learning – allowing for more connection, more human-to-human learning and better outcomes for businesses. This is because it can help streamline the admin work, not just for L&D teams but for other departments too, giving them more time to focus on what is important for their companies and driving results.

What are the biggest challenges in the L&D industry related to AI?

AI isn’t going to make a poor L&D strategy better. And it isn’t going to solve an industry’s challenges on its own. There is a risk that people will let AI do ‘all the work’ when it comes to course creation and devising ideas for training that don’t speak to the business’s unique skills needs. Generative AI tools can’t account for context or correct factual inaccuracies in the data they’re using which could lead to mistakes down the line.

It’s still far better for L&D leaders to work alongside subject-matter experts to develop, review, and improve learning content, with AI playing a supportive role. It’s important to harness the power of AI to make learning streamlined and impactful, without allowing it to dictate everything you do.

What would be your advice to the L&D teams looking to embrace AI skills? What kind of timeline should the L&D professionals have in their minds before launching their AI journeys?

Don’t be afraid of AI – learn what you can about it and learn how to leverage it in a way that can be effective for your business goals. We want L&D leaders to be excited about the potential to create more impactful and efficient learning experiences with AI. The brilliant thing about our AI certification for L&D is that L&D teams will learn real-world instances of how to apply AI in their roles, so once they complete the certificate they are ready to go. And our further suite of AI tools, named Robyn, will be there to assist them on their journeys.

How does a company like 360Learning fit into the ever-evolving space in HR Technology?

I started 360Learning over 10 years ago because I saw how top-down learning was holding companies and people back. I felt there must be a better way for people to learn, engage, and collaborate at work. That’s why we started the collaborative learning movement – bringing together L&D leaders, subject matter experts and peers together to share knowledge, upskill and improve performance. Since then, we now have 1,750+ customers that use 360Learning to reshape their company cultures and upskill their teams from within. As a learning company, we’re ever-evolving, but our mission stays the same: helping companies perform today and get ready for whatever comes next. These AI updates are our response to a need we see in the HR and learning space. They are some of the biggest platform updates we’ve ever rolled out at 360Learning. In the same way, we’ve helped L&D teams across the world to leverage collaborative learning, we’re excited to help them leverage generative AI to 100x their impact and get ready for whatever comes next.

Your prediction on the future of generative AI in organizational development and workforce upskilling:

Generative AI is only going to become more critical to organizational development and workforce upskilling. L&D teams are under more pressure than ever – particularly when companies are cutting budgets, reducing headcounts and pausing on hiring, there is even more demand to make sure teams have the skills they need within the business to thrive. Generative AI is becoming another tool for L&D leaders to be more efficient and impactful – as long as they learn to use it in the right ways. Like for a game of chess, the winners will be AI + humans: by combining their strengths together, this will outperform AI alone and humans alone.

Thank you, Nick! That was fun and hope to see you back on HR Tech Series soon.

[To participate in our interview series, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com