Let your team experiment with AI – it’s the best way to build their confidence

According to EY’s Anxiety in Business, 75% of workers are concerned generative AI will make many jobs obsolete. The urgent need for all industries to get employees comfortable and confident with AI is a workplace reality. All leaders must address it. Employee engagement is at an all-time low, many organizations are wrestling with RTO mandates, and hybrid work is pretty much the norm, making traditional training methods insufficient.

Take a different approach

According to Ethan Mollick of Wharton and others who study technological diffusion, traditional methods of adopting new technologies don’t work well for AI. Mollick suggests individual workers are an organization’s best messengers. Organizations should leverage their advanced users to encourage broader AI adoption.

Given all of that and the way adults learn, there is an opportunity to design programs that drive comfort and confidence with AI at this unique moment in time. Programs that give employees context, inspiration, and, above all, choice. How do you do that? Start by providing as wide a range of use cases and voices as possible to demonstrate the relevance of the technology while taking away the sense that it is exotic and ’not for me’.

Recently, we took our own advice and put this into practice with AI Fest, a global 10-day virtual learning event that included a wide range of content types and modalities. Employees were asked to dedicate at least five hours to experimentation with AI.

How did we do? We had nearly universal participation globally (95%), with the average employee putting in more than four hours over the 10 days. And we saw double-digit increases in confidence and in the percentage of people feeling confident and motivated to put AI to work in their current roles.

The nuts and bolts

To do this successfully, it’s important to first provide context and relevance to help show the potential impact of AI within specific organizational functions. This in turn will demonstrate the relevance of AI to different groups and reduce the perception that AI does not apply to them. Conduct live sessions to discuss AI’s promise and reality within various disciplines, sharing best practices and gathering feedback.

Secondly, it’s crucial to share real-life examples to highlight how AI is currently being used in the organization. Bring in different teams to talk about real-life examples of using AI in their work. You can include sessions that show AI in action across different projects and teams, demonstrating its practical applications.

It’s important then to start regularly introducing new AI tools to your teams. Partner with vetted AI vendors to provide focused, personalized content about the tools and services they offer. Ensure that these introductions are practical and directly relevant to the audience’s needs. For AI Fest, companies such as Runway and OpenAI held in-depth discussions about the possibilities of different tools.

Next, be sure to encourage peer sharing. Solicit short use cases about how people use AI in their personal or professional lives. Make these use cases available on-demand and encourage peer-to-peer learning. These don’t have to be only professional cases either – they can be personal stories such as ‘How I Make Illustrated Storybooks for My Kids’.

Another idea is to create a platform for employees to share their AI experiments and successes, fostering a community of learning and collaboration. If you do this, make sure they have a way to get in touch with one another to allow them to share information about their endeavors.

Lastly, offer resources and support. Provide additional resources such as cheat sheets, helpful links, and access to online learning platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and others. Social media platforms have great free content – from Instagram to TikTok and other places around the web. There’s a lot to take in and share so help your team digest.

When you encourage people to experiment and learn as they go, adoption follows. Give them a chance to play with AI, share their experiences, and pick up tips from one another. By mixing practical AI uses with relatable examples everyone can feel more comfortable and confident with the technology. AI is a tool that can spark innovation and empower teams to boost creativity and efficiency in your marketing if you let it.