AI training for employees who carry the plan
Your leadership team has agreed on AI priorities. Now someone in finance, operations or member services has to turn one of them into a working change. The AI Champions Program is AI training for employees picked for that job. Leadership nominates 10 to 25 staff from across functions, and they meet weekly in a live cohort on Zoom.
Plenty of staff have sat through an AI course, then gone back to the old way. BCG’s AI at Work 2025 survey found that only one-third of employees say they have had proper training. It also found regular use is sharply higher among staff with at least five hours of training and in-person coaching. So this program runs over several weeks, and each champion works on a real task the whole time.
How the AI training for employees works
First, each champion brings one task from their team that AI could help with. Then they run it through four questions, the Four Unlocks.
- Context: what does the system need to see that it can’t see today?
- Agency: what should it be allowed to do, and where does a person sign off?
- Scale: how will we know its error rate, and who watches it?
- Workflow redesign: what changes about the process around it?
Champions do this work between sessions, on their own use case and in their own systems. Then the cohort reviews each other’s work, so nobody spends a week on a generic exercise.
What you have at the end
- Staff who can check new AI ideas against the four questions.
- One scoped, tested use case per champion, with the problem named and the fix specified.
- Shared words between leadership and staff, so the next AI conversation starts at the right question.
When it fits
The program works best after an AI workshop for leadership teams, because then champions carry priorities that leadership already ranked. It also assumes your staff already use AI tools, though nobody needs to code.
Some champions will want to build workflows themselves. They can add Claude Code training for their team, too. And when a use case needs engineering, AI implementation consulting picks it up as a scoped project.
For associations, champions usually come from member-facing teams, as the AI training for associations page explains. For example, a multi-week champions program is under way now with staff at a global industrial manufacturer.
Questions we get
Does this replace a self-paced AI course?
No. It assumes your staff already use AI tools. Courses build fluency, but this program turns fluency into a use case that ships.
Do champions need to code?
No. Champions who will build workflows themselves can also add Claude Code Enablement.
How much does it cost?
It depends on cohort size and length. We quote after the discovery call, and you can compare the options on the AI training programs page first.
Book a 30-minute discovery call
Tell us how many staff you have in mind and which priorities they would carry. Then we will tell you whether a champions cohort is the right next step.