Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Santhosh Keshavan, chief technology and operations officer at Voya Financial.
These days, executive conversations about AI center on what the technology can do. Far less attention is paid to whether the workforce is prepared for it. That’s a problem.
Employees continue to ask real, honest questions about AI: What does this mean for my role? How will my work change? Where do I fit in? Those questions matter, and if organizations don’t address them directly, it can amplify the fear many employees already feel related to the rapid pace and expectations around AI.
For AI to work at scale, employees need new skills, trust and a clear understanding of how it helps them do their jobs.
If organizations want AI to help them succeed, they must build workforce confidence alongside it. AI is only as powerful as the people who use it. When employees understand the tangible benefits in their day-to-day work, adoption follows. But when they don’t, even the most advanced capabilities struggle to gain traction.
As Voya becomes an AI-powered enterprise, we decided to make AI literacy a priority across the company – at every level, within every function. We’re investing in our people and almost our entire base of 11,000 employees has taken that opportunity head on.
Earlier this year we developed a clear, practical, foundational training for our entire workforce – what generative AI is, how it works, where it can help common workplace frustrations and when it needs human judgement (hint: That’s almost always).
This program totals about five hours of learning. More than 1,000 employees helped shape the experience, ensuring it was grounded in real business needs. In just three months, nearly 100% of employees across titles, functions and backgrounds achieved their literacy certification.
Training is our side of the bargain. If we expect employees to fundamentally do their jobs differently using AI, we also have a responsibility to empower them with confidence to do so. We’ve witnessed a shift from concern about what AI might do, to curiosity about what AI can do.
Now, 98% of our employee base is actively using Copilot with 24 average weekly prompts per user. That shift is everything – we’re all in it together, and our leaders gave the rallying cry with authenticity and empathy.
Ongoing experimentation
AI adoption efforts at the enterprise level call for big-picture thinking about how work gets done.
Used thoughtfully, AI can amplify human ingenuity. It allows employees to spend less time on routine tasks and more time applying judgement, solving problems and building relationships to make our processes faster, decisions sharper and experiences better.
We also continue to create opportunities for employee experimentation. For example, we launched an internal “World Cup” style tournament that led to nearly 300 employee-submitted agents now competing for the best potential to create impact at scale.
Some of the most meaningful AI energizers at Voya didn’t emerge from our technology team, but from the units closest to the work who saw ways to improve how things get done.
Of course, this is just the start. Building deeper fluency, strengthening our data and systems, and continuing to test and learn remain critical. This follows the same progression we use across our AI strategy – education, adoption, impact. The goal isn’t activity for its own sake, but in the pursuit of stronger execution and results we can see and measure.
