How do you get your employees to learn and actually use AI?

A one-off workshop on prompting impresses people for a day. Without approved tools, clear rules and a workflow where AI is expected, most staff go back to their old habits — or use personal tools in ways the company cannot see. Training works when it is part of an adoption plan.

Research on customer-support agents found the largest productivity gains among less-experienced workers using an AI assistant, which suggests well-designed tools can also spread good practice across a team.^[2]

• Foundation (all staff, 60–90 minutes): what generative AI is, typical errors, the company's usage policy and data rules.
• Role tracks (2–4 sessions): finance, HR, sales, customer service, operations — each on its own tasks.
• Practice labs: staff bring a real task and complete it with AI under guidance.
• Champions: one trained person per team who answers questions and collects improvements.
• Follow-up after 2–4 weeks: review what is used, what failed and what to standardize.

• Use only company-approved AI tools for work.
• Do not paste confidential, customer or personal data unless the tool is approved for it.
• Check facts, numbers and names before you rely on or send any AI output.
• Say when AI was used where your team's policy requires it.
• Report errors or unsafe outputs to the tool owner.

Some regulators already expect this. In the European Union, Article 4 of the AI Act requires providers and deployers of AI systems to take measures to ensure a sufficient level of AI literacy among their staff; it has applied since 2 February 2025.^[1]

Track a few indicators per workflow: how many people use the approved tool weekly, time per task before and after, quality or error rates in reviewed outputs, and the number of policy breaches or incidents. Ask managers which tasks changed — that is the real test.