Insights / AI
How to train your team on AI when nobody has done it before
Your team is already using it. Fewer than one in five of them was ever trained, and more than half of organizations have no way of telling whether any of it is working.
By McKinley Malbrough III, J.D., MS-HRM. Published September 26, 2026.
Short answer
Start with what the organization permits rather than with the tool, because fewer than half of organizations have a formal AI policy and that unanswered question is what stops people using it well. Teach judgment instead of the interface, since deciding what to hand over does not change when the model does. Run it live: the real blocker is people quietly unsure whether using it makes them look lazy, and that surfaces in a room about nine minutes in, usually as a joke.
How far behind is everybody?
Further than the announcements suggest. Among UK employees who already use AI at work, fewer than one in five has taken any AI training or course, research by The Access Group and YouGov found, and a large KPMG and University of Melbourne study found most organizations have given employees no formal guidance on generative AI at all.
Managers are not ahead of their teams either. In an Indeed and YouGov survey, 43% said they felt poorly equipped or not equipped at all to lead workers with AI expertise.
What should the first session cover?
Not the tool. Start with what the organization permits, which means somebody has to decide what AI should never decide first, because that is the question stopping people from using it well and the one nobody has answered.
Fewer than half of organizations have a formal AI policy, and 57% of those operating in the nineteen states with AI workplace laws did not know those laws applied to them. A session that opens with the boundary is a session people can act on.
How do I teach a tool that changes every month?
Teach the judgment, not the interface. The durable skill is deciding what to hand over and what to keep, and that does not change when the model does.
What to draft with AI and what not to is the split I use in the room.
Should the session be live?
For this one, yes, and for a specific reason. The blocker is rarely capability. It is that people are quietly unsure whether using it makes them look lazy or replaceable, and nobody types that question into a help doc.
It surfaces in a live room about nine minutes in, usually as a joke. That is the moment the session is for. What AI cannot do in a live session covers the limits on the facilitator side.
How do I measure it?
Better than most. 56% of organizations do not measure AI success at all and only 16% use ROI, which means almost any honest measurement puts you ahead of the field.
Pick one task, time it before and after, and count how many people are still doing it the old way at thirty days. How to measure whether it worked has the reporting format.
What about the people who refuse?
Separate the two kinds. Some are protecting a craft judgment worth protecting, and they are usually right about the specific thing they are refusing. Some are afraid, and telling them the tool is exciting does not touch fear.
Name the second one out loud in the room. An unnamed fear runs the session from the back row.
Where these numbers come from
| The Access Group and YouGov, UK AI skills research, 2026 | Among UK employees using AI at work, 19% have taken AI training or courses; 70% describe themselves as experimenting with the tools. |
| KPMG and University of Melbourne global study | Most organizations have not given employees formal guidance on generative AI. |
| Indeed and YouGov manager survey, reported by HR Dive, 2026 | 43% of managers felt poorly equipped or not equipped at all to lead workers with AI expertise; 52% of workers said they were not receiving the AI training they needed. |
| SHRM, AI in HR 2026 and executive insights 2026 | 56% of organizations do not measure AI success and only 16% use ROI; fewer than half have a formal AI policy; 57% in the nineteen states with AI workplace laws did not know those laws applied. |
Data current as of September 2026. Sources are linked where each figure appears.
Keep going
What to draft with AI and what not to
The split that holds when the model changes.
What AI cannot do in a live session
The limits on the facilitator side.
How I use AI here
Disclosed, including what stays out of it.
Want this run for your own managers?
Book twenty minutes and bring the session you are trying to build.