Start Leveraging Your AI Licenses – How to Safely Start Your AI Training Journey 

Of all the companies who have invested in AI, only half are training their employees to use it.  The problem? As with all technologies, untrained employees simply do not use AI, or under-use it, or use it badly. 

What does this mean for your company, if this is your situation? You’re probably burning money in unused AI licenses and not seeing a great deal of transformation in your organisation. 

Interested in fixing it? In this article, we dive into the benefits of investing in AI training, and point you towards an easy way to get started. 

Why is AI Training Important – In Numbers 

There’s an interesting study that was conducted a few months ago by Business.com. They surveyed employees from American SMBs and published the results here: AI Boosts Small Business Productivity, But Employee Training Lags Behind 

This article lists many compelling statistics about the benefits of using AI and the benefits of training employees into AI. If you have a moment to read it, we recommend it. 

For the purpose of our article, we’ve extracted some key numbers: 

• Only 37% of SMB employees surveyed express confidence in their AI skills, largely because of their lack of training 

• On the other hand, 90% of the employees that were trained to use AI report better performance 

The article also shows a compelling difference in AI uptake between companies who offer AI training and companies who don’t: 

• When companies offer no AI training, about 25% of employees use AI every day. 

• When training is offered by companies, 75% of employees use AI every day. 

The takeaway? 

If you have invested in AI solutions for your company, but not in AI training, you are missing out on a massive chunk of your potential ROI: your AI adoption is likely much lower than it should be, meaning you are paying for AI tools that are not actually being used. 

Furthermore, when companies do not provide AI training, there is still a portion of employees who use it anyway – but because they are not trained, or self-trained, they often use it improperly. 

This leads to serious challenges: 

• Low quality work being produced due to a poor understanding of AI limitations and a lack of knowledge of optimal methods for working with AI 

• Security breaches that compromise your company and your clients’ data, due to a lack of understanding of how AI handles data 

How to Get Started Safely 

So, now, you hopefully agree that investing in AI training is a good idea. But where do you begin? 

The Internet is flooded with AI courses spanning a wide range of AI topics. How do you know what topics are relevant to you? How do you find the right training method for your team? Out of all the AI training providers out there, which one is right for you? 

There’s a simple solution that brings great results to the companies with whom we work: do it progressively.  

Instead of investing in a large AI training roll-out all at once, or diving straight into advanced technical skills; choose a low-investment, high impact program that gives everyone foundational AI skills and gets the conversation started. 

What should be in the program: 

• The basics of the nature of AI and the principles behind it 

• Starter skills: how to use simple AI tools effectively and get good results 

• Prompting essentials 

• Safe and ethical AI use – what are the risks and how to manage them? 

Your program of choice should be geared towards adoption and mindset shift rather than pure skilling. 

The right AI training program will drive curiosity and excitement around AI, create motivation for daily use, and get your teams thinking about AI in a strategic and innovative way. 

What makes this a good approach: 

• It gives everyone a shared foundation of good AI practices  

• It gives you the peace of mind that your teams know how to use AI securely 

• It generates curiosity and excitement about AI, increasing usage across your teams 

• It gives your teams the knowledge to spot areas where AI can benefit and accelerate you 

• It increases productivity and efficiency in your company 

• It helps you identify and set priorities for the implementation of further AI solutions  

• It makes it easier to build an AI skilling plan tailored to each employee’s needs 

In summary, once everyone has these basics, it will become easier for you to drive the AI conversation internally, identify which of your processes could benefit from AI, and uncover your real AI training priorities for the more advanced skills you’ll need. 

 

Join our program – Introduction to AI 

You don’t have to, of course. Using the criteria above as a guide, you can do your own research and select a starter program that you feel is a good fit for you. 

With that said, we do recommend you check ours out! 

Introduction to AI has been built around the real challenges and needs of companies who were starting their AI journey. It is designed to get your teams into the mindset of using AI, thinking about AI, innovating with AI. 

This short course is designed to get the AI conversation started in your company, to foster real adoption, and to support your teams in identifying the AI tools and skills that will truly benefit them. 

You can take a look here: Introduction to AI