The European Union AI Act is poised to reshape how organizations develop and deploy artificial intelligence, raising the stakes for workforce readiness. For enterprises, this regulation isn’t just a compliance challenge—it’s a call to action. How do you ensure your teams possess the AI skills to not only meet legal requirements but also seize competitive opportunities?
Achieving organization-wide AI literacy shouldn’t just be a box to check for European enterprises. This is an opportunity to integrate AI, a transformational technology, at every level of the organization. In the years to come, the companies that fully embrace artificial intelligence will achieve a competitive advantage compared to those that only deploy AI as a feature or product.
Since the arrival of generative AI in late 2023, enterprises have built and experimented with a range of AI-powered applications. These AI tools are changing the way companies do business, empowering employees to produce more and move faster.
However, companies must be careful not to simply introduce a new AI tool and turn their employees loose without guidelines. AI responsibility is crucial to ensure organizations reap the benefits of new technologies without running into unintended consequences.
Around the world, governments and regulatory bodies are catching up to the spread of new AI applications and are introducing legislation to guide the rollout and use of AI. Last year, the European Union announced the Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), which introduced a sweeping set of requirements and regulations for the use of high-risk AI tools and systems.
According to the EU AI Act, enterprises must achieve the following by February 2, 2025:
“Providers and deployers of AI systems shall take measures to ensure, to their best extent, a sufficient level of AI literacy of their staff and other persons dealing with the operation and use of AI systems on their behalf, taking into account their technical knowledge, experience, education and training and the context the AI systems are to be used in, and considering the persons or groups of persons on whom the AI systems are to be used.”
In this article, we’ll look at how organizations can ensure sufficient AI literacy among their employees, the long-term benefits of AI literacy, and how to assess AI literacy levels and prescribe an effective learning pathway for employees using Workera.
AI Literacy: Upskilling and Assessment
What does it mean for an employee to have sufficient AI literacy?
Again, the EU AI Act provides a definition:
‘AI literacy’ means skills, knowledge and understanding that allow providers, deployers and affected persons, taking into account their respective rights and obligations in the context of this Regulation, to make an informed deployment of AI systems, as well as to gain awareness about the opportunities and risks of AI and possible harm it can cause.
In practice, enforcement of this requirement will be left up to the EU’s individual member states. However, companies can take the following steps to prepare for the AI literacy requirement of the EU AI Act:
- 1) Assess current AI literacy levels: To understand whether employees have reached a sufficient level of AI literacy, organizations must first assess their employees’ skill levels. These initial assessments will provide a baseline for each employee and for the organization as a whole. Industry benchmarks can also be used to determine whether the organization has any significant gaps.
- 2) Develop learning pathways for employees with skills gaps: Employees who have not reached the level of AI literacy required for their role will need to upskill as quickly as possible to become compliant with the EU regulation. A tailored learning pathway can help employees to acquire the knowledge and skills they’re missing.
- 3) Foster a culture of learning and continuous improvement: It’s worth noting that the EU AI Act must be applied organization-wide, without exceptions. Any organization that is a provider or developer of AI systems must ensure sufficient literacy among their employees. As a result, European enterprises must take this opportunity to embrace AI and foster an organization-wide culture of learning. This supportive environment, focused on continuous improvement, will drive the company as a whole towards AI innovation.
- 4) Monitor progress and verify success: Of course, organizations must be able to verify their employees’ skill levels in order to meet the standards set in the EU AI Act. Employees should be encouraged to re-assess their skills after learning in order to measure their progress and confirm when they have reached their required level of AI literacy.
For the steps above, business leaders should bear in mind that different roles will require different levels of proficiency. An employee responsible for building machine learning models will require much deeper knowledge than an employee who simply uses generative AI tools in their daily tasks. In a previous article, Workera CEO Kian Katanforoosh identifies the different levels of AI employee in an organization — this can serve as a useful framework as companies aim to establish baseline levels of AI literacy for their employees.
Long-Term Benefits of AI Literacy
Companies that achieve organization-wide AI literacy will see long-term shifts in productivity, innovation, and security — reaping the rewards of a workforce which is augmented at every stage by AI.
Workera makes it possible for businesses to rapidly meet the AI literacy expectations established by the EU AI Act, and to begin establishing AI literacy as an organization-wide value and priority. To learn more about how to deploy Workera in your organization, reach out to schedule a demo.
