Many companies in India are introducing artificial intelligence training for all their employees, with a focus on real-world applications.
“The goal is clear — make AI less a theoretical concept and more a capability multiplier across the workforce,” said Achal Khanna, CEO of SHRM East.
While many organizations have basic AI awareness programs, Khanna said some progressive employers are now investing in role-specific AI enablement for their employees, including prompt engineering and workflow automation. “India Inc. is at an inflection point,” she said.
As organizations around the world figure out their AI adoption plans, recent research by McKinsey & Company found that many employees “are eager to gain AI skills.”
HR experts in India said they see AI’s role as that of a collaborator and not a replacement for employees.
“Our people can focus on higher-order tasks while some repetitive, analytical, and administrative workload can be managed more efficiently by AI,” said Preeti Bose, head of leadership and talent at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, a law firm headquartered in Mumbai. Rather than just introducing AI tools, she said they’re looking to develop a culture of AI adoption.
Building a Habit of AI Use
Similarly, at Mumbai-headquartered advertising firm MullenLowe Lintas Group, HR director Garima Pant seeks to build a habit of AI use among employees.
To begin, Pant said the company gave basic training on generative AI (GenAI) to all staff, which includes explaining how to write queries, what not to share in public AI platforms, and the pitfalls of using AI.
“Phase 2 is giving people that specialized training on ‘How do you use specific tools to do your work more efficiently?’ ” Pant said.
The next level after that, she said, is to bring employees to the point where they comfortably use agentic AI, in which AI systems essentially make decisions.
MullenLowe Lintas Group has relied on in-person training sessions. “You have to get people sitting in a room and talking about use cases,” she said.
In addition, employees are sent regular videos on new use cases, such as using AI tools to compare balance sheets, to crystallize research, and to structure a presentation.
In team meetings, employees are asked to share what skills they’ve learned in using AI and are encouraged to implement those skills, Pant said.
Blended Learning Models
Organizations are relying on both in-person and digital training tools to make employees AI-ready. “We’re seeing a rise in blended learning models: microlearning, simulations, peer coaching, and embedded learning aided by AI-powered tools,” Khanna said.
At Genpact, a global technology services and solutions company, employees are getting trained via various AI courses offered on the company’s internal learning platform, Genome.ai. The platform also has a digital mentor named “AI Guru” — a chatbot that guides employees on which skills they should develop and essentially creates a learning path for them.
In addition, all employees are encouraged to use an in-house GenAI chatbot called “Scout,” which can perform various tasks that aid workers, such as summarizing documents, creating presentations, transcribing audio, and even raising a ticket for a tech problem.
“We’re not just training; we’re pushing every Genpact employee to use AI to do more, achieve more,” said Shalini Modi, global employee learning and development leader at Genpact in Noida, India.
Two Levels of AI Fluency
Genpact aims to build two levels of AI fluency among employees. One set of workers will become AI builders, including the organization’s data engineers and other tech employees, who receive advanced AI training. Other employees who are experts in nontech fields go on to become AI practitioners and learn to use AI in their daily work.
“This allows us to provide every individual — whether they’re in HR, finance, business operations, or software engineering — training tailored to how AI elevates their specific role,” Modi said.
Meanwhile, leaders are being put through exclusive AI immersion programs and encouraged to be hands-on with advanced technologies. The goal is to have “90% of our workforce to strategically leverage AI capabilities in their daily work by 2027,” she said.
The success of AI training programs depends on various factors, including management and leadership support, a structured approach, and a flexible training methodology that caters to different sets of participants, Bose said.
To build companywide AI capabilities, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas has conducted foundational sessions to demystify AI and tool-specific feature-based workshops, both in person as well as online.
Like other organizations, it focused on practical use cases for both legal and other professional staff.
“Our in-house innovation team has created opportunities for firm members to engage with AI tools in live environments through pilots and use-case demonstrations,” Bose said. These include conducting legal research and summarizing complex content, among other tasks.
“The goal is to stay ahead of the curve — be it technology or people development,” she said.
Shefali Anand is a New Delhi-based journalist and former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
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