When it comes to learning about generative AI, employees want a lot more than what companies are offering.
According to the 2024 Workplace Learning Report, 80% of employees say they want to learn more about how to use AI in their work. But other LinkedIn research has found that only 38% of U.S. executives are currently helping their employees become AI-literate.
It’s unclear why there’s this disconnect, but there is a way to close the gap: Hold a company-wide AI Learning Day. And take advantage of the 250 free AI courses (in seven languages) that LinkedIn Learning has unlocked for everyone’s use through April 5, 2024.
Over the last year, companies such as Kraft Heinz and Thomson Reuters have done just that. “We wanted to carve out the time and the space for employees to build knowledge and skills,” says Abby Pinto, who leads the enterprise learning and development team at Thomson Reuters. “AI is such a core part of our business and our value proposition, and we want to continually be at the forefront of this for our customers and in our markets.”
Even if your company is not as big as Kraft Heinz or Thomson Reuters, you can still help employees acquire skills by holding an AI Learning Day. Here are a few tips on how to do it.
1. Set clear goals and objectives
Perhaps the most important step in planning an AI Learning Day is to be clear about what you want to achieve. What do you want employees to learn? Are there any outcomes you’d like to see?
When Kraft Heinz was planning its 2023 Ownerversity Day — a 24-hour global learning event — with the theme of “Revolutionizing Creativity and Collaboration Through the Power of AI,” the company’s learning leaders knew they wanted to focus on three topics.
“The first was What is AI,” says Pamay Bassey, Kraft Heinz’s chief learning and diversity officer. “To kick off the conversation, we first explored the true meaning of AI, how it’s intended to be used, its power, and the challenges that are faced when considering and leveraging AI.”
The second topic was How is AI Used at Kraft Heinz, an exploration of the AI projects and pilots that were already underway in the company. And the third was What Does AI Mean for Each of Us? “As we considered this question,” Pamay says, “we discussed the ways that AI can be leveraged both in our personal and professional lives.”
2. Choose engaging topics for learning and workshops
Once you’re clear about your objectives, you’ll need to create courses and workshops for the day — and it helps if you can make those as engaging and relevant for your employees’ work as possible.
That’s the approach Thomson Reuters took when it launched its first AI Learning Day in April of 2023. Because gen AI was still new and buzzy, the company offered 12 sessions focused on introducing the technology.
These included AI 101, which covered the definitions of AI, GAI, machine learning, and deep learning, and AI at Thomson Reuters, which offered examples of internal use cases. Another session, AI in Our Markets, focused on what Thomson Reuters’s customers were doing, what they were excited and concerned about, and what they were asking for.
When the company held their second AI Learning Day this February, employees were further along in their AI education, so Abby and her team created sessions on “mindset” — what employees can bring to the AI transformation — and the specific GAI tools available at the company.
The sessions were such a draw that more than 6,000 employees (out of 26,000) joined the AI Learning Day in 2023 and roughly 5,700 joined this year.
3. Invite experts to lead the training
If you want to keep employees engaged during an AI Learning Day, invite compelling experts to give talks, participate in Q&As, or lead training sessions.
Kraft Heinz, for example, held Intro to AI sessions with the founders of Uplimit, an educational technology startup. They offered a fireside chat with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, an actor, director, writer, and entrepreneur who spoke about the relationship between creativity and technology. And they presented a number of Tingly TED Talks (Tingly Ted’s is a line of the company’s hot sauces) with Kraft Heinz leaders, who discussed the cutting-edge work the company is doing and how AI had helped to drive their innovation.
This lineup shows that AI is a hot field right now — and there are plenty of people around the globe (and even in your company) who have interesting things to say about it and who would make great speakers.
4. Provide hands-on learning opportunities
What employees need more than anything right now are opportunities to play around with GAI and get to know it better. That’s why Thomson Reuters offered only three formal learning sessions during its 2024 Learning Day and then, Abby says, issued “an invitation to carve out time for the rest of the day” for workers to learn more on their own.
Before letting employees loose, however, Abby and her team showed them how to access Thomson Reuters’s internal gen AI playground, Open Arena, and offered guided suggestions about how to use it.
“We told employees, ‘Here are some specific ways, specific parts of that playground you can use for different use cases,’” she says. “We tried to give people really clear guidance so that they could head right over and take advantage of it.”
She also pointed employees to an internal website dedicated to all things AI. “The site is a combination of what’s happening around the organization, as well as learning resources and external news,” Abby says. “We keep that fresh and continue to drive people there.”
Final thoughts: It’s not a one-and-done
GAI is changing so quickly that if you host one successful Learning Day, it’s a great start but probably just the first step in a longer learning journey.
Kraft Heinz plans to keep going, and has launched an AI accelerator, which provides a combination of hands-on learning experiences, playlists with beginner, intermediate, and advanced learning about AI, and learning events that feature internal AI experts.
And Thomson Reuters is continuing the journey too. “Our Learning Days were not the only two places or two times where we are going to focus people’s efforts on this,” Abby says.“This is going to be ongoing for us, through this year and beyond.”
