Recently, I watched a 1950s short film about door-to-door salespeople. We all know how that vocation ultimately faded away, replaced by systems that made physically visiting homes obsolete: retail chains, mail-order catalogs, mass advertising, and eventually e-commerce.

It’s funny how much time we spend thinking about the future and inevitable disruptions while rarely reflecting on past ways of working and how they evolved. Certain jobs disappeared, but better systems emerged for customers, along with entirely new kinds of work. The essential link was training people for those evolving roles. The AI era is no different.

Reports forecast that companies will invest $2 trillion in AI initiatives by 2026 . Much of that spending may fail to generate expected returns, according to Gartner research . Part of the problem is how organizations think about training itself: new research suggests many companies overlook its broader impact, finding that when employees are better trained, productivity rises and managers spend less time troubleshooting, freeing them to focus on higher-level work.

For leaders, the question is: How do we bridge the gap between tomorrow’s opportunities and today’s training demands? ChatGPT can be a powerful resource for making training programs more effective. Here are five prompts to get started.

Build An Inventory Of Your Current Programs

Each company has its own approach to training. While some organizations follow more traditional, structured online and in-person training modules, I appreciate those who think outside the box. At one e-commerce company, for example, employees taught each other various skills, and not necessarily related to their jobs. Courses covered everything from coding to tango to mixology. While the ROI might not be obvious, I think the long-term impact is invaluable: cultivating a learning culture (that actually sounds fun).

The first step in leveling up your training is to take stock of what you currently offer. That’s the only way to discover whether your training is meeting employees’ needs. ChatGPT can help. It can also offer objective ideas for the learning and culture goals you’re aiming to achieve.

“I’d like you to act as an organizational learning consultant and walk me through a structured Q&A about my company’s current training programs, learning culture, mentorship, onboarding, skill development, and employee engagement. Please ask follow-up questions to help identify where training is ineffective, outdated, or disconnected from employees’ real needs. Then suggest creative, practical ways to improve learning and culture based on my organization’s goals, including ideas like peer-to-peer teaching, employee-led workshops, reverse mentoring, cross-functional learning, and other nontraditional programs that make learning collaborative, engaging, and genuinely valuable.”

Incorporate Employee Insight

What’s the most effective way to improve a product or service? I strongly believe that it starts with listening to the people who use it—the customer or user. The same logic applies to leaders setting out to shore up their training programs. The most important stakeholders are the people who stand to benefit from the programs: your employees.

I’ve seen leaders struggle with trying to figure out how to get more from employee training—without ever thinking to ask the employees themselves. Fortunately for today’s leaders, AI-powered tools and agents can automate the employee feedback loop. I’ve found that asking pretty basic, open-ended questions is the best way to solicit honest, thoughtful responses. Once you’ve collected some data, tap ChatGPT to help you sift through it.

“I’m going to share employee feedback about our company’s training and development programs. I’d like you to analyze the responses for recurring themes, unmet needs, frustrations, and opportunities for improvement. Please identify patterns across departments or seniority levels if relevant, highlight what employees value most, and suggest practical ways to improve training, engagement, and learning culture based on the feedback.”

Develop Role-Play Scenarios

Imagine giving your teenage kid a book on how to drive and having them sit through an online driving course, then once completed, handing over your keys. You don’t have to be a parent to see the issue—and to recognize the gap between the learning materials and the real skill acquisition.

Learning while doing is essential for so many workplace skills. And yet, so many training programs fall short of providing that hands-on experience.

Role-play scenarios can help employees practice the kinds of things that no book or standardized online program can teach. For example, how to have tough conversations when the emotional stakes are high. ChatGPT can help you develop these scenarios.

“I’d like you to help me create realistic role-play training scenarios for employees to practice together. Ask me about the skills, roles, challenges, and workplace dynamics involved, then develop interactive scenarios with character backgrounds, goals, emotional dynamics, potential conflicts, and discussion prompts. Focus especially on situations that require judgment, communication, leadership, empathy, collaboration, or difficult conversations—skills best learned through practice rather than lectures or online modules.”

Build Training Directly Into Workflows

One of the biggest barriers to effective training programs is that they are burdensome to employees’ already busy schedules. Countless surveys have found the same concern among employees: they don’t have enough time to participate in career development activities.

The solution: create opportunities during regular work hours for training and development. At Jotform, we do our best to ensure that employees have rich lives outside of work. Happy, non-perpetually-frazzled employees stick around longer. They bring energy and enthusiasm to the office. That’s why I encourage managers and employees to prioritize training and development that can be built into their existing workflows, even if it means leaving a bit more slack in their schedules.

ChatGPT can help you analyze current workflows and identify ways to incorporate training or development, without piling more onto employees’ plates.

“I’m going to describe an employee’s [or team’s] current workflows, responsibilities, and areas where I’d like them to build new skills. Please analyze their day-to-day work and suggest practical ways to integrate learning and development directly into existing tasks, projects, meetings, and routines. Focus on opportunities for growth that strengthen skills through hands-on experience, collaboration, feedback, or cross-functional exposure rather than adding burdensome standalone training.”

Enhancing Training To The Next Level In The AI Era

AI has arrived in the workplace, and if you’re not ensuring your employees receive adequate training, your competitors are. Leaders are responsible for giving employees the tools to succeed. That requires opportunities to test and experiment with emerging technologies.

“Using slide decks to master AI is like using textbooks to master surgery; they might help you grasp the theory, but they won’t teach you how to actually do the work,” Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio writes for Harvard Business Review .

ChatGPT can help you identify relevant technologies that will actually help your team and simulate real-world scenarios while staying within your budget constraints.

“I’d like you to help me identify practical AI tools and workflows for my [team/department] team. They are responsible for [responsibilities], and we’re currently struggling with [challenge/pain point]. We currently use [existing tool/platform], and our goals are to [describe goals] while staying within a budget of [budget range]. Please recommend high-ROI AI tools we could test in the next 30–60 days, and the training employees would need to use these tools effectively.”