AI comms rollouts need to account for employee readiness

One employee at a given company may already have AI built into their daily workflow. Another may still be trying to figure out how the same technology changes their role. Comms needs to reach them both with AI rollout messaging.

During Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference last month, Dr. Sydney Savion, vice chancellor for people, culture and belonging at Vanderbilt University, said that communicators can learn a lot about how their colleagues react to disruption as AI changes how many people work.

“AI may feel unprecedented, but I think the human response is not,” Savion said. “People are asking, ‘What happens to my work? What happens to my value? And what happens to me?’ This is where I think communication becomes strategic.”

A single AI rollout messaging campaign can sound a lot different to two employees with different levels of familiarity with automation, even if they’re at the same organization. It can be easy to try to pull all employees toward the advanced end of the AI adoption spectrum in messaging. But Savion cautioned against getting ahead of where employees actually are.