The long-standing training method of role-plays is as constant as it is controversial in the workplace across a diverse range of sectors.
When executed well, role-play training can be enormously beneficial, preparing employees for real situations, facilitating confidence-building and providing an opportunity for constructive feedback.
For soft skills and interpersonal skills, engaging in role-play training can improve communication and foster better teamwork.
Traditional Role-Play Limitations
Despite being a staple training method, traditional role-play training is also bereft with flaws.
The idea of play-acting in front of peers or a manager can be extremely daunting for some, making the experience awkward and something to “get over with” rather than encouraging meaningful participation.
Even the best role-play training sessions are limited when you consider that they are hard to scale, time-consuming, expensive and they take key employees out of business operations to train their colleagues.
And even then, the impact can be short-lived.
The effects of one-off, sporadic role-play training sessions, no-matter how well designed and well received, can diminish over time without the opportunity for regular practice.
Not all managers are suited to driving role-play training, providing a poor experience and leading to inconsistencies across the business. Skilled facilitators are crucial to engage learners and conduct impactful role-play training.
Role-Play in the Age of AI
The good news is that role-play is having something of a resurgence in the age of AI.
Can AI agents, backed up with agentic AI, AI-powered free-form dialogue and simulated realistic scenarios really replace the very best of human driven role-play training?
We believe it can, and it can do this at scale.
In fact, not only does AI-driven role-play training address the limitations of traditional methods, but also it offers significant additional advantages:
- Scalability: AI-driven platforms can scale training across large organizations without the need for extensive human resources and taking talent out of front-line operations.
- Consistent Benchmarks and Frameworks: Facilitates consistent results across organizations with the ability to roll out training on demand.
- Personalization: A personalized learning experience that works for the individual.
- Real-Time Feedback: Not only for individual employees to help them improve their performance and skills, but also for the business as the AI can help identify areas of strength and weakness, skills gaps and trends.
- Engagement and Realism: This is critical to successful role-play training and where excellent simulation design really makes an impact.
Game-Based AI Role-Play Training
Achieving high engagement levels is paramount to the success of any training method and this is no less true for role-play. The more engagement, the more impact. It is well documented that gamification is an impactful way to improve engagement.
In role-play design, this is where AI application is an art as much as a science. Simply applying the tech is not enough to drive engagement. That’s why virtual humans need to be carefully engineered, including agentic AI application, to have realistic personality traits. They should be able to push back when challenged or close up if you push them too far. Game mechanics fuel the engagement. It is serious learning but there is a fun factor driving you to succeed, progress through levels, collect your stars and repeat to master skills.
Use Cases for AI-Driven Role-Play Training
AI-driven role-plays are extremely versatile. They can be used in the following contexts:
- Sales Training: AI driven role-plays can simulate customer interactions, helping sales teams practice and refine their techniques and objection handling.
- Customer Service: Prepare customer service representatives for a wide range of enquiries, including complaints.
- Onboarding: New hires can benefit greatly from AI driven role-plays that accelerate their learning and integration into the company.
- Coaching: Support all aspects of coaching skills and techniques to achieve coaching mastery.
Handling Difficult Conversations With AI-Powered Role-Play Training
Even better news for AI driven role-play training is that there is high demand for it.
Attensi carried out an independent survey of 2,139 employees in the U.K. and U.S.
75% said that they had experienced anxiety due to difficult workplace conversations, 33% as recently as the last six months. That figure is even more stark for younger employees at 39% and 38% respectively for Gen Z and Millennials.
72% of respondents said they would welcome more practice in handling difficult conversations, rising to 87% for Gen Z.
One of the most fascinating insights from the survey is the attitudes towards embracing AI.
When asked if they would prefer role-play training from their manager or an AI-powered virtual role-play trainer, employees were evenly split at 38% each way. Remarkably, almost a quarter of respondents — 24% — expressed no preference between the two! This will be welcome news to managers, who can save valuable time by handing training over to their AI virtual colleagues.
With Agentic AI coming as the next big wave of AI, it is perhaps both surprising and reassuring to know that employees are already open to the idea of being trained in the workplace by an AI virtual role-play trainer.
Conclusion
Role-play training has retained its place as a staple in learning and development (L&D) and workplace training for good reason, even though it has limitations in its traditional form.
With AI and agentic AI specifically, the new age of role-play training promises to be better than ever.
AI agents are making their way into workplaces not to take jobs, but to make people better at their jobs. Where AI has largely been a productivity tool, taking on laborious tasks and making work processes more efficient, this new wave of “human-like” AI offers support at a whole new level.
And employees are more than ready to welcome it. With AI and agentic AI specifically, the new age of role-play training promises to be better than ever.
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