AI literacy: the 3-wave programme that lasts

An AI talk in the auditorium, a full room, questions right up to the last minute. Three weeks later, usage is back where it started. The soufflé has collapsed, and many AI literacy programmes stop at this point.

At AI Sisters, an AI consultancy, we have worked with more than 900 companies and trained 60,000 employees. The programmes that last almost always follow the same pattern: three waves, each one preparing the next. Here is how it runs, with examples from our projects, and how to measure what is still there six months later.

In brief

• AI literacy gives every employee the basics they need to use AI in their work, safely.
• A one-off event makes people want to try, but it rarely builds habits.
• Wave 1: volunteer ambassadors, trained in depth, one per team.
• Wave 2: an AI Show for the whole company, built on your tools and your documents.
• Wave 3: workshops by job role, with 90% hands-on practice.
• Usage is measured before the programme, then at 30 and 90 days, with four simple indicators.

Read also: AI training by job role, department by department, the AI Act requirement to train your teams and shadow AI in the workplace.

What is AI literacy?

AI literacy is the first step in an artificial intelligence training plan. It is for everyone, well beyond the technical teams. By the end, each employee knows what generative AI does well and where it gets things wrong, which data they can share with it, and how to use it for a task from their daily work.

The aim is a shared foundation across the whole company: nobody is left out, whether from fear of the tool or from too much trust in its answers. Expertise comes later, for the teams that need it.

There is a regulatory side too. Since 2 February 2025, Article 4 of the AI Act has required companies that use AI systems to take measures to ensure a sufficient level of AI literacy among their staff, according to the European Commission.

To put it simply. AI literacy plays the role of the highway code. It does not make you a racing driver, but without it nobody gets behind the wheel with confidence. The workshops by job role come next: they are the driving lessons, on your usual route.

Why the soufflé collapses

After a one-off event, the usage curve often looks like a spike followed by a long decline. A programme in several stages builds usage step by step.

The causes are almost always the same:

• A single session. People discover AI on a Tuesday, then nothing. Without practice in the following week, no habit forms.
• Generic examples. A poem about cybersecurity amuses the room, but nobody writes one at the office. People remember what looks like their own work.
• Unclear rules. If nobody knows which data they can paste into the tool, caution wins and the tool stays closed. Or everyone uses their personal account, and the company discovers shadow AI.
• Nobody to keep it going. Without someone in each team to pass things on, the question “how did you do that?” has nobody to go to.

The questionnaire sent to TotalEnergies’ People & Services teams before their July 2026 session confirmed it: 81% of respondents wanted to learn more so they could use AI responsibly. As long as security remains a grey area, usage stays limited to low-stakes tasks.

The 3-wave AI literacy programme

The timeline below is a guide. An SME can complete it all in six weeks, a large group in six months. The order of the waves matters more than their length.

Wave 1: train the ambassadors

Start small, with volunteers: one per team, or one per site. They are not necessarily the most tech-savvy people. You are looking for people their colleagues listen to, and who are keen to try.

They take in-depth training on the company’s tool, whether that is Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Then each of them identifies two or three tasks in their department where AI would save time. These examples become the material for wave 2.

The Promptathon suits this wave well: a team prompting competition, with challenges taken from your line of work. At TotalEnergies, the Copilot Promptathon brought together 8 groups, each led by an appointed Tech Leader. That role is a forerunner of the ambassador role.

Wave 2: the AI Show for everyone

Once the ambassadors are ready, the whole company goes through an AI Show, with 15 to more than 500 participants per session. Live demonstrations, then hands on the keyboard, on your tools and your real documents. The ambassadors present their examples, and a colleague from the department next door is often more convincing than an outside speaker.

A few recent Shows show how the format adapts. At VINCI Facilities, it focused on Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio, the tools already rolled out in the company. TV5Monde combined it with an audit of its processes. The Sustainability Department at Accor ran an AI Show and a Promptathon back to back on the same day, on Accor GPT, the group’s in-house AI.

To put it simply. The AI Show works like a film trailer. It makes you want to see the film, without replacing it. Without wave 3, the interest fades within a few weeks.

Wave 3: workshops by job role

This wave turns interest into habit. Each department takes an AI workshop for its job role, with 90% hands-on practice on its own files. HR drafts a job description and compares CVs, finance analyses a report, communications adapts a message for several channels. Everyone leaves with prompts tested on their own documents.

To plan the workshops department by department, our AI training by job role page sets out the learning paths for each function.

Samsung Electronics France has followed this rhythm for two years, one division after another: 400 employees brought into the generative AI programme, then, on 27 August 2026, a tailored morning for the HR teams, with a Promptathon on real HR cases.

Measuring adoption at 30 and 90 days

The number of people trained tells you what you spent. To find out what has changed in the work itself, four indicators are enough.

The initial questionnaire is often the most revealing. At TotalEnergies, it showed that 89% of respondents were already using Copilot every day. So the session focused on advanced uses and security rules, and skipped the introduction to the tool.

When an indicator drops in a department, the answer is often a refresher workshop or a new use case championed by the ambassador. To put a figure on the return on investment, our article on the ROI of AI training explains the calculation.

Planning and funding the programme

Many companies launch their AI literacy programme at the start of the year, once the skills development plan has been approved. To start in February or March, lay the groundwork in the autumn: choosing the ambassadors, listing the tools already rolled out, and a pre-audit of each job role.

AI Sisters is Qualiopi certified, and our training is rated 9.5/10. This means all three waves can be funded by your OPCO. The details are explained on our Qualiopi AI training page.

Key takeaways

• AI literacy concerns every employee, and the AI Act requires a sufficient level of AI literacy.
• A one-off event creates a spike in usage, then usage falls back.
• Start with ambassadors, continue with an AI Show for everyone, finish with workshops by job role.
• Take your examples from the company’s own job roles and documents.
• Set the data rules from wave 2 onwards.
• Record four indicators before the programme, then at 30 and 90 days.

Sources

• European Commission, AI Literacy, Questions & Answers, accessed 6 November 2026.
• AI Sisters, 45 HR employees trained in one afternoon: the TotalEnergies Copilot Promptathon, case study, published 12 June 2026.
• AI Sisters, The Samsung Electronics France AI Promptathon, case study, published 2 September 2026.
• AI Sisters, Accor’s Sustainability Department moves to Accor GPT, case study, published 6 October 2026.
• AI Sisters, AI literacy: the AI Show, accessed 6 November 2026.