How do you feel about jumping on board the artificial intelligence (AI) train? Are you the grumpy resistor? The passive acceptor? Or the ambitious enthusiast? At its core, AI is a change initiative and as with any huge change project, to be successful it has to be welcomed, learned, adopted and ultimately perceived as a great return on investment (ROI) to its recipients. We all know its potential to make our lives easier and provide our organizations with stunning competitive advantages, but none of that potential is realized if we don’t open our minds and arms to embrace all that this change has to offer.

Individuals and organizations who can quickly move beyond their initial resistance and hesitation to proactive adoption will enjoy a performance advantage over those who can’t. The fundamental mindset needs to move from “this change is happening to me” to this “change is happening for me.”

For the adoption of AI to be efficient and fully maximized in any organization, learning and development (L&D) groups should take a two-pronged approach:

1. Change Training that teaches employees new psychological and behavioral techniques to transform their natural tendencies to resist change initiatives, into deliberate efforts to embrace them as unique opportunities.
2. AI Training that teaches employees how to use the specific AI tools and tracks the actual benefits for the individual and organization.

The following two case studies use a six-level approach to training evaluation, showing you how to measure the effectiveness of each type of program and demonstrate ROI to your stakeholders.

Case Study 1: Change Training

This study used a sample of 42 retail managers who were trained in how to better plan, manage and lead a change initiative in their stores. When a new, online digital approach to engaging customers was implemented, managers were given two days of change training plus two coaching sessions to improve their mindset and drive the behaviors that would make their adoption more successful. The results at each level of training impact were as follows:

Level 1: Did they like it?

100% of participants were engaged and satisfied with the change training program.

Level 2: Did they learn anything?

Approximately 98% of participants acquired new and valuable knowledge (as measured before and after the program) in the following areas:

• Recognizing their emotional signals to change as opportunities.
• Seeing change as fuel for higher performance.
• Assessing the options and opportunities the change situation brings.

Level 3: Did they do anything differently or better on the job?

Approximately 94% of participants showed some to exceptional improvement in the following key behaviors which were measured 90 days after the program:

• Creating action plans to embrace and advocate for change across their teams
• Checking in with others to see how they are managing the change
• Gathering input and guidance from others

Level 4: Did it impact the business?

There was a 25% overall increase in productivity per participant directly attributable to training. To isolate the impact of training on performance, we used both an estimate technique and a comparable control group of untrained employees. For the estimate technique we collected performance increase data over the post-training months, then adjusted these percentage estimates down for error, resulting in the 25% improvement directly due to training. For the control group technique, we found a positive trend in adoption and sales for the trained versus untrained groups, but the sample size needed to be larger to reach statistical significance.

Level 5: Was it worth it?

There was a 44% ROI after three months and a potential annualized ROI of 476%. To develop our ROI, we aggregated the benefits identified at Level 4 (estimated overall performance increases), monetized them using the average salary for our participants and compared them to the fully loaded costs of training.

Level 6: What factors back on the job maximize ROI?

Those participants who had supportive managers and attended both coaching sessions had 3X greater ROI! To conduct this analysis, we broke our sample into two groups: those who had fair to high manager support post-training and attended both coaching sessions (Group A) and those who received neither support nor coaching (Group B). Results showed that ROI can increase dramatically when participants are provided post-training resources to help them practice and apply the change behaviors.

Case Study 2: AI Training

This study used a sample of 210 customer care employees within a health care company who were chosen as a pilot cohort to fully use and explore the benefits of the organization’s AI tools in their everyday jobs. The training was approximately six hours and included lessons in creating communications, optimizing commands, finding content and using AI-generated data to personalize interactions with customers. To capture the effectiveness and impact of this integrated AI work, we again used the six-level evaluation approach and found the following results:

Level 1: Did they like it?

100% of participants said the training was extremely engaging and relevant to their roles.

Level 2: Did they learn anything?

100% of participants acquired new and valuable knowledge about how to use the AI tools to improve their performance.

Level 3: Did they do anything differently or better on the job?

Approximately 98% of participants continued to apply their new AI skills back on the job over the 60 days post-training. This meant they were able to:

• Improve the quality of their deliverables
• Improve troubleshooting
• Avoid rework
• Quickly build profiles to customize conversations with customers

Level 4: Did it impact the business?

Quantifiable benefits were:

• Average of 8 hours saved per week per participant
• 11% increase in customer satisfaction
• 5 FTE cost-save
• 6% increase in revenue generated

To make sure we isolated the impact of the AI training, we compared the 210 employees to a control group of employees who were untrained for the same 60-day period. For the time saving and performance increase metric, we used estimates that came directly from the participants.

Level 5 ROI: Was it worth it?

616% ROI after just 60 days and a potential annualized ROI for each participant of 1628%. We took the benefits identified at Level 4, monetized them and compared them to the fully loaded costs of training. This ROI was particularly high because the overall cost was relatively low.

Level 6: What factors back on the job maximize ROI?

Participants who had high support from their managers had more than double the ROI. The question we wanted to answer was: Did AI adoption and the resultant benefits depend on support from the immediate manager of participants? We found that the ROI could increase to more than 2,000% if managers gave participants the time and freedom to try all their AI tools.

The Bottom Line on AI and Change Training

The question isn’t whether AI is a good investment, but rather, how good can we make it? That is, what can we do to pull away from the pack of organizations that will also be investing in AI and maximize outcomes? While both case studies were impressive on their own, imagine the resulting ROI of combining them. Teaching people how to embrace AI changes may be the first way to carve out that crucial competitive advantage. While most AI capabilities will be available to all organizations, it’s still only going to become a real “game-changer” for those who can adapt, adopt and extract its full potential before everyone else.

So, why would any individual or organization not jump on board the AI train? From my own research with clients, the biggest initial resistor is borne from the notion that we as humans are competing with AI. What should help you move past this resistor is the revelation that AI is not here to compete with humans, but rather to help humans compete with one another. We are in control of how we use it, and how well we use it will predict how we survive and thrive in a world where other humans are trying to gain a competitive advantage over us. If you look at it this way, you will see it as a powerful partner instead of an opponent you need to fear. Training that helps us adopt these new mindsets, along with the technical advances, will leave us primed to maximize the ROI of all our AI investments. Full steam ahead.