Everyone has gaps in their skills and knowledge. They can take all different forms and sizes - from small, commonly shared gaps to larger (and occasionally embarrassing) ones.

Maybe you never really got to grips with a specific aspect of your job role, and now feel it’s too late to ask. Maybe your industry is moving at such a fast pace that you’re struggling to keep up. Or, maybe you’ve heard people say a certain obscure acronym multiple times and nodded along, afraid to question it. (CSM, SDR, API, ABCD…)

Whatever form the knowledge gap takes, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. According to McKinsey and Company, this is a very common phenomenon with 87% of companies reporting that they have skills gaps.

All that being said, at Thrive we’re in the business of learning - so how do you go about filling those knowledge gaps quickly and effectively?

You may have heard the opinion that, in the age of the internet, we have all the knowledge in the world at our fingertips - but are no smarter for it. In this blog, we’ll explore how AI can help you harness the endless well of resources on the internet in a way that is actually useful, and finally fill your knowledge gaps (or those of your employees!)
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How to use AI to fill knowledge gaps

It’s well reported that AI is a powerful tool when utilised correctly.

At Thrive, we've recently launched Thrive AI: a suite of innovative AI features that will help learners find answers in minutes via WhatsApp coach, and help admins create content with the click of a button.

It's safe to say we're thinking a lot about AI at the moment, and in this blog we’ll specifically be discussing five different ways it can be used for workplace skills and knowledge gaps.
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Identifying gaps

The first and most critical step to filling a knowledge gap is identifying where the gap is in the first place. You may have heard this phrase, common in L&D circles: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

But with the help of the right Learning Platform, you can finally find out, using AI functionality that recognises skills gaps and suggests personally-tailored goals to help you fill them.

For example, we at Thrive have recently released our Innovation Roadmap, which includes AI suggested goals. This feature takes in users’ behaviour on the platform, and automatically creates pathways and goals with recommended suggestions. The result? Filling knowledge gaps with minimal effort.

You can then test your knowledge with auto-generated assessments, allowing you to evaluate your abilities quickly and easily.

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AI coaching and feedback

Moving on from identifying the gaps, the first great way to fill them is with coaching. Unsurprisingly we’re big advocates of coaching within organisations, and AI helps you scale your feedback by automating it - so you can help a greater number of people.

There are several AI tools that allow you to streamline your coaching and mentoring practice. As with most AI tools, they are all works in progress. But they serve as extremely helpful ways to bridge gaps, and provide feedback to your people without having to devote inordinate amounts of time and resources to it.

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Synthesia

This tool essentially allows you to clone yourself in digital form, and use an AI avatar with your likeness to deliver invaluable feedback to your employees. Instead of pouring hours into writing and filming, you can cut down on the steps between crafting your feedback and your people receiving it. Synesthesia allows you to deliver personalisation at scale, so your people feel truly connected.

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Otter AI

Otter AI is helping to fill knowledge gaps by automating the most laborious part of coaching: Giving and taking notes. Otter’s AI technology plugs into your virtual (or in-person!) meeting, automatically transcribing it while also creating notes and capturing action items.

This allows you and your people to refer back to the conversation with ease, and save time on creating tasks and objectives.

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Chat GPT for creating objectives and tasks

Another way to utilise AI for coaching, mentoring and feedback is with the original artificial intelligence poster child, ChatGPT.

If you’re a people manager, Chat GPT can help you with far more than just wording a tricky email. The tool can serve as invaluable support in your 1:1’s, and be used to create objectives and tasks around areas they want to improve.

You can see our example below for an effective prompt:

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Streamlining information

How often have you spent more time than you can spare trawling search engines for answers? Clicking through countless irrelevant web pages, you try to piece together the answer to your query from disparate sources and almost always come up short.

As we explored in our blog 5 ways to use ChatGPT for workplace learning, ChatGPT and other Large Language Models can drastically cut down on that search time. Instead of chasing down various sources and fragments of information, you can simply ask a direct question and receive a quick and complete response.

Whereas with Google or other search engines your knowledge gap risks never being filled, AI has a much greater chance of giving you the information you need.
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AI-powered automation

What is your, or your employees’, most precious resource?

Time.

One of the biggest ways that AI can help fill workplace knowledge and skill gaps is not necessarily by directly filling the gap in question, but by freeing up time you may not have otherwise had. This in turn allows you to explore your own professional learning and development.

Here are a few examples of AI-powered productivity tools that will help you and your teams to automate certain tasks, freeing up more time to fill knowledge gaps.
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Taskade

This AI workflow tool can automate tasks, generate workflows, and serve as an assistant delivering crucial information about your team’s projects. It can also summarise notes and create action items, to help your people collaborate with ease - and save valuable time.
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Scribe

Scribe cuts down on training time by automatically generating step-by-step guides for your company’s processes. Via a simple web plugin, the tool captures the process as you go through it and creates a step-by-step instruction manual. No longer will you have to stoop over your teammate’s shoulder or take screenshots of your computer. Just undertake the process as you usually would, and Scribe will do the rest.
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Magical

Magical is an AI writing assistant that automates the “boring bits” of a lot of roles by allowing you to auto-draft messages. It will adapt to your writing style, absorb the context of the conversation, and create a response in one click. You’ll no longer have to spend hours writing and sending basically-identical-but-ever-so-slightly-different emails to hundreds of people - freeing up more time to focus on your own learning.
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Language translation

One of the things getting in the way of filling a knowledge gap could be a language barrier.

Think about it: Perhaps you have a Subject Matter Expert (SME, speaking of acronyms…) within your company, who isn’t fluent in the rest of the team’s native language - but they need to share their knowledge. AI helps break down this barrier with Language Translation, facilitating communication between time zones.

Not to toot our own horn again, but at Thrive we offer a Localisation feature as a part of our LMS, so nothing gets lost in translation. This function auto-translates the site text based on where the user is in the world.

Thanks for reading our guide on how AI can help to bridge knowledge gaps within the workplace. If you’re interested in finding out more about how Thrive could help your business, book a demo today.