Free template
Train by role, not by licence
A one-page plan that says what each group must be able to do with AI, in what format, how often, and what record you keep. The record is your evidence when a customer, auditor or regulator asks.
Licences are not adoption
A business that buys two hundred licences and has forty regular users has a 20% adoption rate and a procurement problem. Training is what closes the gap.
The gains from AI tend to go to the least experienced people. Yet most rollouts give the tools to leadership first and the frontline last. A plan by role puts the training where the gains are.
What the training is really for
The skills gap is rarely about how AI works. It is mostly about four other things, built in this order.
- Knowing what the tools are good and bad at. Drafting, yes. Arithmetic across a spreadsheet, no. Legal citations, only with checking. Everyone needs this.
- Knowing what to ask. AI produces what was asked for, not what was needed. Good briefing is a manager's skill: context, constraints, the standard the answer must meet.
- Checking. The judgement to tell when the output is wrong, which belongs to the people who know the subject.
- Redesigning the work. Changing the process, not bolting the tool onto the old one. This sits with line managers.
A handful of people need a fifth: building and testing the systems themselves. That is a role, not a course.
Who needs what
| Audience | What they must be able to do | Format | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership | Explain what AI is and is not, the four levels, the regulatory picture, and how to read an AI business case | A tailored half or full-day awareness session | Once, then a short annual update |
| Line managers | Measure AI use in their team, and redesign one process around it | Awareness before their teams, then a workshop on their own process | Before each rollout |
| Everyone with access to AI tools | Follow the policy: what may go in, how to check output, how to report a problem | A 20-minute briefing, the gate before access | At launch, when tools change, and yearly |
| Each function | Use the rolled-out tools on their own recurring tasks, and know where they are unreliable | Hands-on enablement per function | As each function gets the tools |
| Engineers and builders | Retrieval, evaluation, confidence scoring, escalation, prompt-injection defence | Developer enablement | Before building, then as the tools change |
| Roles near high-risk uses | The specific duties: human oversight, documentation, transparency | Targeted training in scope | Before the system goes live |
Include contractors and temporary staff who use the tools. Pointing people at the vendor's instructions is not enough.
Three numbers worth tracking
Regular use by role
The share of each role using the tools in their real work each week, from the usage data, not the seat count.
Training by role
Who has been trained, in what, and when, against who has access. Gaps show where to go next.
One process changed
For each manager, one change in the team's process they can describe in a sentence.
Using the template
Is AI literacy training a legal requirement?
Article 4 of the EU AI Act asked providers and deployers to ensure a sufficient level of AI literacy among their staff from February 2025. The 2026 amendments softened the wording, so the Commission and member states now support and facilitate literacy. The expectation is unchanged: regulators, customers and auditors will ask what training you have done, and the record is the answer.
Does everyone need the same course?
No. One generic e-learning module for everyone does not work and does not meet the guidance. Training should fit the role and the system, be repeated, and be recorded.
Should we teach prompting?
Teach people the tools on their own tasks, and build good prompts into the workflow so people do not have to write them. A prompting course on its own rarely changes how much gets done.
Plan the training with us
CONVERGE chapter 20 covers people, skills and shadow AI in full, and GOVERN chapter 11 covers literacy as a control, with the record that proves it. Or we can build and run the plan with you, on your own tools and tasks.