4 days ago
3 Strategies For Building An AI-Literate Organization
Findings from recent SAP research indicates those with higher literacy were far more likely to expect positive outcomes from AI, and far less likely to feel fear, distress, or apprehension.
By Dr. Autumn D. Krauss, Chief Scientist, Market Insights & Customer Engagement, SAP SuccessFactors
The rapidly advancing nature of artificial intelligence presents a challenge for organizations and their workforces that want to embrace it. Everyone knows they need to adopt AI, but with AI-enabled tools and technology changing on a daily basis, it's hard to figure out how to jump in and start making sense of it all. This prompts the primary question of who is more likely to catch the AI wave by successfully building the right type of AI knowledge and skills and how they can best go about gaining them.
To investigate this topic, my team of organizational scientists at SAP first conducted a global study in October 2024 to understand the AI attitudes and behaviors of workers across industries, gathering responses from 4,023 employees and managers. The questions were broad: Had respondents used AI tools at work? How optimistic—or anxious—did they feel about AI's growing role in the workplace? Were they confident in their own ability to work with these tools?
Findings from that study showed that the biggest factor shaping how employees felt about AI at the time—whether they were hopeful, fearful, or somewhere in between—was their level of AI literacy. Did they know how to apply AI to achieve goals? Could they detect when they were interacting with AI? Could they assess the capabilities and limitations of the technology? These are the qualities of AI literacy.
Those with higher literacy were far more likely to expect positive outcomes from AI, and far less likely to feel fear, distress, or apprehension. They were also more likely to express nuanced, mature views on how AI use should (or shouldn't) influence workplace decisions like promotion and compensation.
It was too early to draw a straight line from an employee's AI literacy to business performance, but it made sense that workers most comfortable experimenting with new tools and spotting their practical value would also be the ones to help drive meaningful returns.
How do you build that kind of AI-literate workforce? Our recent follow-up study of 4,030 employees and managers globally makes clear that even though different people require different kinds of support, three core strategies yield the strongest effect: experiential exposure, structured training, and the influence of an AI-literate organizational culture. More on each approach follows.
The most effective way to build AI literacy is to let people get their hands dirty. For many, comfort with AI is like comfort behind the wheel when you're learning to drive. Manuals and even simulators are simply not a substitute.
For organizations, this means giving employees low-stakes ways to experiment with AI. Let them use it to draft e-mails, summarize documents, or mockup project plans. The key is to keep the setting contained—such as internal communications or intramural projects—where mistakes are low-impact, quickly forgiven, and unlikely to reach customers or damage the company's reputation.
While best practices are emerging, it is clear that AI training works best when it's specific to the tools people use, the jobs they hold, and the tasks they perform.
Many employees don't realize that AI is already embedded in their applications—suggesting Outlook replies or auto-summarizing meetings in Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Helping them spot those features—while showing how much faster a task gets done with AI versus without—can build confidence.
At the job-level, a good AI training program lifts workers' performance. For some employees, this may eventually involve learning how models are trained, tuned, and maintained. But for many others, practical essentials will suffice, such as how to craft effective prompts, where to find the right data inputs, and how to integrate AI outputs into their work.
A strong training program also should help employees develop a feel for which parts of their work still call for a human touch. When training helps an employee work through these specifics, they can more effectively identify the uses of AI that will most benefit their work.
Organizational science has long shown the power of company culture to influence employee attitudes and behaviors. Now there exists an opportunity to use these social dynamics to foster collective AI literacy. Specifically, leaders can and should:
When it comes to AI, workers already know it matters and are already thinking seriously about how their jobs will change as a result of it. What they're looking for is help getting started, and AI literacy is the first step.
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