AI upskilling made clear: A practical guide to building an AI-ready workforce

If you're an L&D leader right now, you're likely in a state of AI overwhelm. Your CEO is talking about AI in all-hands meetings, your employees are experimenting with ChatGPT and asking when they'll get proper training, and the pressure to "do something" about AI learning is mounting by the day. 

Despite knowing you have to act, the path forward is anything but clear. From understanding what employees should be learning about AI to who actually owns upskilling, all while moving fast enough to stay relevant when AI itself is evolving every week, feels impossible. This challenge is intensified by the fact that 40% of employees say AI strategy is not being communicated consistently by leadership, leaving learners uncertain about expectations and direction (Go1 AI Research Report, 2025). 

That's exactly why we built the Go1 AI Upskilling Playbook—a clear, actionable pathway to creating and implementing an AI learning strategy in your organization. 

This ready-to-use resource provides role-specific learning paths, practical rollout steps, and the right success metrics to track. It's designed specifically for L&D leaders who need to move quickly and confidently, with the structure and clarity to succeed. 

The Go1 Upskilling Playbook is a clear, step-by-step plan designed to help you implement AI learning in your organization, all without reinventing the wheel or waiting months for a custom strategy to take shape.  

Unlike other how-to guides or articles on AI upskilling, the playbook focuses on helping you accomplish AI learning implementation success in three core ways. 

1. Assess: Understand your AI starting point 

Based on Go1’s content intelligence and millions of learner feedback points, the Go1 Upskilling Playbook equips you with the foundational frameworks you need to build a sustainable AI learning strategy from the ground up, helping you to: 

• Determine your role in developing an AI strategy: Only 23% of organizations describe AI ownership as "very clear" —a lack of leadership that keeps entire organizations in a state of chaos. With the Go1 Upskilling Playbook, you'll be able to clearly identify your role in a company-wide AI transformation and recognize key dependencies with other teams like data, IT, and executive leadership—and learn how to position L&D as a strategic partner.
• Identify the four primary AI competencies to tackle first: The playbook offers data-driven insight into the four most essential AI competencies, giving your organization a clear, trusted starting point for AI learning. 
• Assess your company’s AI readiness: Access a pre-built AI readiness survey to send throughout your organization, so you can get a complete snapshot of confidence levels, common barriers, and priority areas for AI learning.  

2.  Design: Develop role-based learning that sticks 

Our data shows that AI adoption varies significantly across departments and roles: 75% of tech workers use AI regularly, while only 30% of service roles do. Likewise, L&D leaders are already finding that learners want more control over AI personalization than they initially anticipated.  

This adoption pattern means that AI learning has to be role-specific instead of one size fits all, and give employees AI skills they can actually apply to their day-to-day work. 

To help you meet employees where they are, the Go1 Upskilling Playbook offers: 

• Pre-built content recommendations for departments like technology and business 
• Role-specific courses that learners can discover on their own  
• Sequencing guidance so you know what to teach first, second, and third 
• Content recommendations aligned to real workflow applications and top AI tools 

3. Launch: Implement your AI learning strategy with confidence  

 One of the biggest challenges L&D leaders face is actually knowing how to launch an AI learning program. This uncertainty is reinforced by the fact that 47% of employees say leadership communication about AI is inconsistent or unclear, making it difficult for teams to establish momentum and ensure employees understand the purpose and value of AI upskilling (Go1 AI Research Report, 2025). 

The Go1 Upskilling Playbook removes the guesswork and gives you a proven path forward, complete with the assets you need to build stakeholder support and quickly drive learner engagement, from day one with: 

• Step-by-step rollout plan: From confirming an executive sponsor to full-scale deployment, with clear milestones and checklists. 
• Key metric recommendations: Track what actually matters like engagement rates, skill acquisition, and early signs of AI adoption in workflows. 
• Marketing and enablement assets: Ready-to-use templates to win leadership buy-in and engage learners quickly, including executive presentation decks, internal communication templates, and program launch materials 

Most AI resources for L&D fall into one of two categories. They are either too high level to be actionable or too technical to be practical. The Go1 AI Upskilling Playbook sits in the middle, grounded in real data from thousands of AI learners, informed by what is actually working across organizations, and designed to be implemented quickly without a team of consultants. 

Go1 uniquely brings together AI powered content intelligence, the world’s largest content library, role-based learning pathways, enterprise governance and reporting, and a skills first learning architecture. Whether you are starting from scratch or scaling fast, Go1 gives you the clarity, structure, and content ecosystem to upskill your workforce with confidence.