← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
Doug Stephen on Immersive Learning, AI, and the Future of Workforce Training | Ep 1170
00:12:54
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Doug Stephen. Doug Stephen is the President of CGS Immersive, a leading expert in leveraging learning, methodology and technology to solve critical business challenges. With over two decades of experience consulting with Fortune 1000 companies, he understands what it takes to drive significant improvements in employee engagement, operational performance and revenue growth. At CGS Immersive, Doug leads the vision and execution of groundbreaking edtech platforms that are transforming the way companies work and learn. Doug is a frequent speaker at industry leading events like AES, ATD Technology AWE and Field Service and is passionate about helping organizations unlock the full potential of their workforce through the power of immersive technology. Well, good afternoon Doug. Welcome to the show.
- [01:12]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:13]
A
Absolutely, my friend. And I appreciate it because I know.
- [01:15]
B
The weather's a little crazy.
- [01:17]
A
You're all the way east in Atlantic time zone in New Brunswick, Canada and I'm in Kansas City. So I do appreciate you making the time, traversing time zones, etc. And Doug, we're going to jump right into your first question. You've spent over 20 years helping Fortune 1000 companies use learning, methodology and technology to solve real business challenges. What are the most persistent gaps you still see in how organizations approach workforce development?
- [01:46]
B
That's a really good question. And there's really three that stand out. But first of all, if I look back 20 years and go forward 20 years, massive changes in the technology. But unfortunately our behavior inside the organizations really hasn't caught up. And what I mean by that is, you know, we're fantastic at creating decks and videos and LMS courses, but we still experience this thing called scrap learning. You inundate a person, sit down eight hours at a time, they watch some content and then six weeks later they try to do their aspects of the job and they forget 75% of it. We've got to be able to change and we have the technology to be able to do it. Second of all, we confuse in a lot of cases watching content with building capacity. People need reps, not just resources. And we're going to talk a little more about how you get simulations and repetitions and you do role play. That's how you really learn. And especially now where we've got the tools to help us, but really it's allowing us to be able to build our people skills, which is Interacting with our customers or employees. And really last but not least, the biggest gap is simple. We still haven't tried training to business outcomes in P and L. And until we do that, we're going to get smiley faces and check marks that it was engaging. But most important, we've got to say let's build this course because we want to be able to increase revenue twofold or we want to reduce costs or we want to increase our NPS score. We have measurable outcomes and then that way we can adjust if we think that those outcomes aren't coming in a lot of cases related to the training that we're doing. So if I was to just to summarize that too much content, not enough real world practice and not enough accountability to measure performance and PL impact.
- [03:37]
A
Love that. Love this. You summarizing that. We've both seen a lot of changes in tech in the last 20 plus years as you mentioned. But you know, you're right, we're still doing this scrap learning as you called it, which isn't really effective. We do need to leverage more technology and it's the people need the reps, not just the resources as you mentioned, to really learn and grasp stuff and really to hit the nail on the head here, tie that learning and change to the company's outcomes and financials bottom line and that's where we'll start to see some changes there. So I appreciate that. And Doug at CGS Immersive, you're building edtech platforms that blend immersive technology with modern learning science. How does immersive learning experiences outperform traditional training methods in areas like retention, engagement and on the job performance?
- [04:29]
B
Again, really insightful question. If I was to boil it down to one sentence. The core difference is simple. Traditional training asks you to watch the game. Immersive training lets you play it. Just think of yourself when you're a kid and the coach would show you how to do a certain routine and you thought you could do it, you believed you could do it, then all of a sudden you were called onto the game to do it. Totally different things. And that's the key. We've got to be able to get experiential training, practice, practice and attempts and simulations that can happen. We're seeing studies that we've done with virtual reality where we've seen four times faster training and outcomes and measurable outcomes because people are doing it. We, we literally worked with a call center and it was after these agents, inbound agents had a call in which the, the customer had a problem and they were able to solve that problem. Then they tried to upsell them to another service. What they found that by using role play beforehand to practice these simulations, they were able in the span of six to eight weeks, increase the sales close rate by 3 to 5%. That might not sound like much. When you're dealing with a book of business of $500 million, it makes measurable results. What changed? People didn't have the fear when the call came in. They knew what to ask because they practice it. We're seeing that throughout. We've got, we work with one of the largest blood collection companies in the world and we reduced the training time from 65 days down to 28 days. We had people practicing on the blood collection material using first augmented reality, then virtual reality. So when they came to actually work on the actual machine, they were evaluated on how they did, not what they had to do. So pretty dramatic impacts to a company's bottom line and the satisfaction of the employees.
- [06:28]
A
That's awesome. And you do employees do feel better about what they're learning when they can really grasp it and apply it right away. You mentioned traditional training. Watch the game and then immersive training allows you to play the game. I thought that was pretty neat practice and simulations is how we get this done. Measurable outcomes with immersive simulations is the way to go. And I just like, like you said, reducing those training times and improving the bottom line. I think so important.
- [06:55]
B
You know what it is, what's pretty interesting and you're really great summarizing on that, Brian. It takes the fear of the first conversation and you're saying everybody's scared of AI. But if it can make you a better conversationalist and to be able to be prepared for difficult conversations and probing questions, it's going to make, I hate using a general term, humanity better because we understand these conditions and we don't react too negatively when things like this happen.
- [07:26]
A
Absolutely. And it does give the person confidence. So I appreciate that. And Doug, immersive technology is evolving rapidly from augmented reality, virtual reality to spatial computing to digital twins. Which of these technologies are creating the base impact today and which are still on the horizon?
- [07:44]
B
Okay, I'm going to probing question. I'm going to say we need to park AR&VR to the side and choose a little bit. Right now the biggest impact right now is coming from AI powered experiences on devices. You got Grok, you got Gemini, you got OpenAI where you're using this and then you've got what's called Agentic practices where you can have a real person work with the machine to do multiple tasks. But where we see AR and VR come into play is when you layer on AI powered experiences. As an example, you think of what Zuckerberg is doing with his, with his arrangement with the Ray Ban glasses and where surely you're going to see direct ar, where all of a sudden you're going to have those glasses. You'll be able to bring up your assistant as an augmented reality digital twin. You'll be able to walk around, look at places, ask your assistant about anything that you see or any questions that you have in real time. So all of a sudden you, in a lot of cases we're seeing, can those type of glasses tied together with ar, tied together with AI, can they actually replace the phone? Because now you're not touching anything, you're just visualizing the information is coming in, you're talking to it. So, yes, it's AI powered experiences. But we're thinking where the real jump is going to come when we start seeing the practicality of basically meshing that with both AR and VR.
- [09:19]
A
That's amazing. And I think that's key. The one takeaway here, AI powered experiences on devices are truly going to take us to that next level, which we're seeing that now. And you talked about that with an example of Meta has come out with these glasses now, these smart glasses which are going to allow people to be even more interactive with the device because it's literally on their face, right on their head. So I think that's going to be huge.
- [09:47]
B
And you know, it's kind of interesting, Brian, that, that I thought that they really got. It had to look good that we've seen some great technology by some of the bigger players. And it almost looked like you were wearing an underwater sea helmet. These look cool. Like they look like part of what you wear when you go out. So form factor critical. Because people at the end of the day don't want to be seen as a geek looking at, they just want to be able to have it as a power device.
- [10:14]
A
Absolutely. And yeah, they partnered with, I believe, Ray Ban on this. So yeah, awesome. Doug, the last question of the day here. If we look ahead, what does the future of work and workforce learning look like? How will immersive technology reshape everything from onboarding to upskilling to leadership development in the coming decade?
- [10:34]
B
I'm an optimist about the humanity. I think the future will work is going to be a workforce that's more confident, more capable, more Human. And I know that seems to be like an oxymoron with AI, but with AI and immersive tech quietly running in the background, they can be looked upon as one of our most patient practice partners. And that's the key. We have to not fear it, we have to embrace it, but we have to control it. And that's what I think is where I see things happening. We're going to, you know what we're going to happen. If you look at it, onboarding is going to become simulation. First. We're going to simulate, we're going to act it out. We're going to say it's not training, it's knowledge. Upskilling becomes continuous. And at the point of work, if ever we need something, we can get our assistant or we can bring up that material and we can look at it through a digital twin, or we can get it through our Ray Ban glasses. And then leadership development is always going to be working uniquely on those skills, leadership, empathy and collaboration. And they're really going to be able to practice that confidently using these tools. So when it goes into working at work in the real terms, they're going to really be able to be comfortable with what they're saying. So I feel highly confident. We can't run away from it, we can't shut it down. The genie's out of the box and. And I believe it can be a betterment for, for mankind.
- [12:03]
A
Absolutely. As I always say, making the world a better place. We just need to make sure those guardrails are in place. We, we know how that can go sometimes. But I, like you mentioned, future of work is going to be more confident, capable and human and we can control the future. And this onboarding simulation, as you mentioned, I thought it was pretty neat. It's not training, it's knowledge, I think that's so important. So, Doug, I really appreciate you coming on the show today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [12:30]
B
Thank you, Brian, and really good questions and I hope the audience gets a little bit something out of this. I'm excited about the future and the work that we're in and I just see a really bright future. Once again, thank you for asking me to be on your show. It's great to. It's a privilege to be here.
- [12:45]
A
Bye for now.