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AI may make knowledge easier to access, but human growth is about more than knowing. OCBC’s Head of Campus CoLab explains how designing for employee growth in five forms of capital – from skills and experience to identity, culture, and relationships – can help employees continue to create value in an AI-enabled workplace. The irony: this can be enabled using AI.
AI can now generate content, answer questions, and deliver learning materials in minutes. For L&D teams, that raises a pressing question: if technology can increasingly make knowledge accessible, where can L&D create distinctive value?
For Seet Teng Low (pictured above), Head of Campus CoLab, Group Human Resources, OCBC, the answer is not to compete with AI on content. It is to focus on what she calls “human relevance”, which OCBC defines as “the capacity of humans to create value”.
Delivering the opening keynote at the 12th edition of Learning & Development Asia – Singapore on 16 September, Low argued that “the biggest threat to L&D today is not AI”, but a failure to redefine the value the function brings to organisations and the wider ecosystem.
To explain how that capacity can be developed, Low pointed to five forms of capital that shape how people learn and grow throughout their lives: human, seed, identity, cultural and social capital.
#1 Human capital: what people know and can do
The first is the most familiar to L&D: human capital – or the knowledge, abilities, skills and competence that each individual possesses and accumulates.
“As L&D professionals, we pride ourselves in generating content, curating and bridging knowledge and skills gaps for employees that we work with. And AI is doing it so much more efficiently nowadays.”
The challenge L&D now faces therefore, is shifting from just upskilling people to also supporting them in better judgement, stronger collaboration, and more human value creation.
#2 Seed capital: capabilities people weren’t aware of displaying
The second is seed capital – the baseline abilities that get forsaken in humans. Think English literacy, knowledge of how to use the Internet, etc.
Low illustrated the point with an internal experiment at OCBC. Only a small percentage of employees were able to identify 15 or more skills they possessed, despite many having worked for at least five years.
The finding raises a different question for L&D: what if the issue is not that people lack capabilities, but that they do not recognise how much they have already developed?
That distinction matters for lifelong learning. An employee's ability to learn something new is partly shaped by what they already know, even when those capabilities are not immediately visible to them. Baseline abilities become the bedrock for new explorations and learning.
L&D teams, therefore, need to help employees recognise the skills already sitting beneath the surface.
#3 Identity capital: the narrative people have about themselves
That leads into the third form: identity capital, which touches on the narratives people have about who they are, and who they are not.
Low gave the example of employees who have spent much of their careers in operations. She recalled hearing them say: "I have been doing operations and following SOPs for 20 years of my life, and it has got me to where I am today. I can’t and won’t do anything else.”
For Low, it's L&D's responsibility to show them that their identity is “not stuck to what they've been doing so far.”
“If we expose our employees to boundary-less definitions of jobs – that Operations can also entail operational excellence, project management etc, the employee’s identity then starts to morph from “I follow SOPs” to “I can create SOPs to help make life easier for myself and others”. This shift in framing a person’s identity opens up new possibilities on what employees can choose to embark on at work.”
#4 Cultural capital: norms and opportunities for new behaviours
The fourth is cultural capital: the norms, values and workplace conditions that shape which behaviours feel acceptable, encouraged, and sustainable.
Low pointed to a simple human instinct behind this: “Humans are born with an innate desire to belong.” That desire to belong can make behavioural change difficult when new ways of working conflict with established norms.
"When the culture does not afford you to make changes in the way you think, and the way you behave, it's really much harder to sustain that behaviour."
The challenge for L&D is a gradual but essential one – to drive cultural opportunities for stigma-free growth; from the very top to the last man in the organisation.
#5 Social capital: networks for support and growth
The fifth is social capital: the relationships, networks and connections that people build throughout their lives.
This is a reminder that learning does not happen only through formal programmes. Bringing people together to learn from one another can also help them build relationships that support future development. Culture does not change overnight, but conversations and relationships can start and strengthen every minute. It is only by enhancing employees’ trust and relationships with one another, can individuals feel less “alone” in driving culture shifts.
From delivering knowledge to enabling growth using AI
In an AI-enabled workplace, L&D’s value may lie less in being the place where people acquire knowledge, and more in helping them turn knowledge into growth, relationships, and value.
Does that mean we leave out AI completely? On the contrary, Low shares how AI is being embedded across L&D initiatives to support human growth.
One example is the use of AI-powered tools that provide employees with timely, personalised feedback to help them reflect on and strengthen workplace interactions and leadership effectiveness.
Serving as a personalised development companion, these tools create a safe environment for employees to experiment, practise, and uncover blind spots that may be limiting their growth. Low cites examples such as leaders becoming more aware of how they engage their teams, whether they are creating space for diverse perspectives, or how effectively they encourage collaborative problem-solving. Delivered through a non-judgmental platform that can be accessed repeatedly, the feedback enables continuous learning and self-improvement.
Through the incorporation of AI-enabled tools, the success of L&D initiatives can also be measured beyond traditional metrics such as training hours, focusing instead on the growth and behavioural changes employees demonstrate over time.
In short, Low is calling for a shift in L&D’s value: not the end of learning, but a broader understanding of what it means for humans to keep growing when machines can increasingly handle the act of knowing. And, of course, to keep experimenting, with technology and data serving as enablers that provide deeper insights into whether the organisation is moving in the right direction.
ALSO READ: The new rules of workplace learning, as revealed at Learning & Development Asia 2026, Singapore
Lead image / HRO
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