One AI tool, various levels of knowledge: how do you roll out Copilot in a structured way in your organization?

When AI made its appearance, everyone had to deal with a new phenomenon. Both in business and private life, people started experimenting. They did not go hand in hand. Some fully embraced AI, while others ignored the tools.

Now that AI is becoming more and more common, many organizations want to get serious about it. They have to deal with different levels of maturity. A group of employees have already been experimenting with AI tools at home or in the office and are ready for the next step. At the same time, there are colleagues who know what Copilot is, but still don't use it.

How do you deal with that as an organization? We sat down with Dani Brandsema, adoption consultant at Wortell. In this blog post, she explains how to roll out AI in a structured way when your employees have different levels of knowledge.

How much AI knowledge does each employee have?

"Suppose you have run a pilot around Copilot use with 50 employees and the use cases are positive," says Dani. "Often there are two following objectives: deepening the knowledge of the pilot participants and scaling up AI within the organization. At that point, you see that there are two or more levels of maturity. The 50 pilot participants already know quite a lot about Copilot. But you don't know what about the other 1,950 employees."

It is crucial to first map out the knowledge level of all employees. Wortell's Copilot Accelerate Program therefore starts with a Maturity Assessment. "This allows us to measure where each employee currently stands in terms of knowledge, so that we can scale everyone at the right level of knowledge," Dani explains. "Within the program we have two tracks. For the free licensees we have developed the Microsoft Copilot Chat Accelerate Program and for the paid licensees there is the Microsoft 365 Copilot Accelerate Program. Each track has its own levels, communication and means of adoption. This allows people to grow as they develop their Copilot skills."

Gathering knowledge and growing in cycles

Someone who starts at level 1 can go through a nice growth path. But employees who join at a higher level also have the opportunity to continue learning. "Microsoft is constantly developing Copilot," says Dani. "When people have a high level of knowledge, we make sure they stay up to date with the latest updates. We provide additional tips so that they continue to work optimally with Copilot."

Wortell's Copilot Accelerate Program is therefore not a one-off program. "We work in fixed cycles of four months," says Dani. "After a cycle, we evaluate where the customer stands and how they want to proceed."

What if there is a need for the next cycle? Dani: "Then we do a re-assessment and re-assess the employees at the right level of knowledge. This will allow us to offer them adoption tools that match their level of knowledge over the next four months."

From low-threshold introduction to optimization

With the Copilot Chat program, Copilot becomes a lot less intimidating for people who don't have office roles, but who can benefit from it, such as healthcare or production workers. "The focus is on an accessible introduction to AI," says Dani. "We first help people to develop the basic skills and to apply Copilot responsibly in their daily work. When employees are advanced, we ensure that they can get everything out of the tool to optimize their working methods."

This set-up also provides the necessary advantages at board level. Dani: "Management gains insight into the actual Copilot use within the organization. For example, the Copilot Adoption Dashboard shows you the active users, the usage per application and trends over time. You can also fully follow the progress of employees and teams: from the first experiment to structural use."

In short, you get a good idea of how employees use and apply Copilot in their work. This makes adoption and maturity measurable. "The program helps you know where Copilot delivers value and where extra guidance is needed," Dani says. "This allows you to steer AI investments in a much more targeted way."