How to immerse your employees in AI training
Employees often complain that their companies are slow to deliver AI training and a week-long immersion program could be the answer
AI is moving so fast employees can’t keep up. By the time they’ve been trained on one tool, there’s usually another they need to get to grips with.
There are a few reasons this is happening. For starters, there are some employees who are reluctant to embrace AI and fear that it may eventually eliminate their role. Other employees may struggle to find the time to complete training. Then there’s the fact that companies have been inherently slow to roll out training programs in the first place.
More than half (54%) of 1,200 US employees surveyed by TalentLMS in 2025 reported that their employers had a clear lack of guidelines around AI tool use, while 49% believe advancements in AI are outpacing their company’s training capabilities. This can lead to problems such as shadow AI.
Nearly two-thirds (63%) said that current AI training programs could do with significant improvement. Given that rapid advances in AI mean skills learnt can quickly become outdated, 69% would prefer if training were delivered at a faster pace.
The solution to this logistical challenge could be to set aside a fixed period of time to immerse employees in AI.
Immersing employees in AI for a week
Last November, Vertafore ran an ‘AI Immersion Week’. The insurance technology provider’s 2,300-plus global workforce paused its business-as-usual to experiment with AI tools to gain confidence and learn how they can be of benefit to them.
“We were very intentional about how we structured the week,” says Tracey Brown, senior vice president and general manager at Vertafore and the person who led the campaign.
“Everyone started with the same baseline – company-wide training on ethics, security and responsible use – so we were all speaking the same language. From there, teams spent the week working hands-on with AI in ways tied directly to their day-to-day jobs. Experts were available to help them test ideas and move towards implementation,” Brown tells ITPro.
Similarly, design software maker Canva ran an ‘AI Discovery Week’ last July. It was an “intentional space for all of our 5,000-plus employees globally to get hands-on with AI,” as Faye Longhurst, regional people lead Europe at Canva, puts it to ITPro.
“We did this through a ‘choose-your-own-adventure-style’ schedule,” she says. There were 30 technical and non-technical workshops and sessions for employees to choose from. They were encouraged to postpone non-urgent meetings and push back deadlines to shift their focus to learning.
An immediate impact
When employees feel underwhelmed and bored by AI training, then they’re going to be less engaged and the training is likely to have little to no impact. However, both Canva and Vertafore saw immediate benefits from immersing their employees in AI.
For Canva, “the week was transformative for our [workforce], not just in terms of skill-building, but in fostering genuine curiosity and connection,” says Longhurst. Employees clocked more than 25,000 hours of learning in total and 330 hackathon ideas were generated. Internal roadshows were also held to showcase creations, including a tool for coordinating meetings across time zones and an AI agent that recommends the best templates for tasks.
Brown describes the employee response to Vertafore’s week as “overwhelmingly positive”. By the end of the training, both employees and managers reported feeling more confident in using AI tools in their roles. And, after the week, the number of employees who viewed AI as a “go-to collaborator” doubled.
The need for continuous learning
The ultimate measure of success for training is how employees take what they’ve learned and continue to engage with AI once it’s finished.
“We’re keen to build on this momentum and ensure that learning with AI remains an ongoing journey for our team,” says Longhurst. Canva’s employees have access to resources via an internal AI hub which they can use to advance their knowledge at their own pace. Bi-monthly meetings, dubbed ‘AI forums’, are held to share ideas and progress.
“We’ll keep evolving our approach based on team feedback so that every employee is supported to explore, learn, and thrive together,” Longhurt adds.
Since the completion of Vertafore’s training week, its engineers have been using AI to accelerate coding and testing, while customer support employees have been using it to summarize calls and identify which customer cases need to be escalated. “The week really helped our team move from curiosity to real-world use … Many of our teams have moved beyond experimentation to implementation,” says Brown.
At the heart of continued engagement with AI post-training is the need for employees to be reassured that they’re not going to be replaced. According to an EY report from last October, 84% of 1,100 workers are enthusiastic about the possibilities of agentic AI, but 56% worry about their job security and 51% believe agents could push them out of the labor market.
“We continually reinforce that AI is a tool. It isn’t a replacement for human judgment or expertise,” Brown stresses. “Our focus has been on keeping humans in the loop and using AI to amplify what our people already do best.”
