EP 142: How to Build AI Fluency on a Shoestring Budget | AI in HR Series
Series: AI in HR Series · Host: Kerri Roberts · Run time: ~30 minutes
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-waste-the-chaos/id1723388520) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0nmxuIYEmqpbqZxzoxgiMY) · Buzzsprout (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2471085)
📺 Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/3NZhvDgj9a8?si=z9xwUrRQBBKRKy1R
📖 Read the full transcript below
Episode Summary
AI fluency is about to be as common as knowing how to use email. Not a specialist skill you hire for. Not a role you add to the org chart. A baseline expectation for every person in your organization, the same way spreadsheets became a baseline expectation twenty years ago. LinkedIn’s Work Change Report puts 70% of the skills used in jobs today on track to change by 2030. Only about 35% of workers think AI skills are extremely or very important right now. That gap is the whole problem. Here’s what nobody is telling small and mid-sized businesses: closing it does not take a training budget. Your people are already using AI, whether you’ve blessed it or not. The C-suite estimates 4% of employees use AI for at least a third of their daily work. Employees say it’s closer to 13%. You’re not sparking adoption from zero. You’re putting structure around something that’s already happening in the background, with no login, no business account, and no instructions.
In this episode Kerri walks through what AI fluency actually is (it is not a list of viral prompt hacks), the human judgment layer that never leaves your hands, and four free levers to build fluency in your business this month. Plus the year she spent employee-free, the $80,000 it saved, and the BlackBerry she swore she’d never give up. Fluency without judgment is just faster mistakes.
In This Episode
Why AI skills belong to every role in your business, not just the person who handles your tech
The Excel class Kerri’s boss made her take in 2008, and why it’s the exact model for AI training today
The adoption gap leaders keep getting wrong: the C-suite guesses 4%, employees report 13%
What AI fluency actually means, broken into five plain things anyone can learn
The never-evers: what should never go into an AI tool, and why “they’ll use their judgment” isn’t a policy
Why untrained AI use is an unmeasured cost line, not a freebie (only 12% of workers got any AI training last year)
Four cheap levers: the 30-minute “here’s how we use it here” meeting, a shared prompt library, named AI champions, and the free training already inside your tools
Why clarity is the highest-leverage thing a leader can offer: only 22% of employees say their organization has communicated a clear AI plan
Chapter Timestamps
0:00 AI fluency is becoming a baseline business skill
2:24 The Excel class my boss made me take in 2008
4:30 70% of job skills change by 2030 (and only 35% think it matters)
6:50 Where AI still needs a human: my blog draft example
9:15 What AI fluency actually is (it’s not prompt hacks)
11:39 A year employee-free and $80K saved
14:00 Knowing what stays human
16:17 The training gap is an unmeasured cost line
18:43 Four cheap levers to build fluency
20:53 Only 22% of employees say there’s a clear AI plan
21:54 The BlackBerry story
24:03 A client example: five repeatable tasks per manager
26:25 Where to start if this already sounds like a part-time job
28:44 Your one honest question this week
Resources Mentioned
The HR Easy Button (book) - saltandlightadvisors.com/thehreasybutton - paperback, hardback, and Kindle on Amazon
HR Foundations (course, under $400) - saltandlightadvisors.com/hrfoundations
HR coursework, all three tracks (Foundational HR, HR Operating Systems, Strategic HR) - saltandlightadvisors.com/resources
Free Mini HR Audit - saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit
Work with Kerri / fractional HR support - saltandlightadvisors.com/contact
Companion blog post: Your Team Is Already Using AI. Nobody Wrote Down the Rules. - saltandlightadvisors.com/blog
Episodes in the AI in HR Series
EP 134: Is Your HR Actually Ready for AI? The 5-Question Readiness Test
EP 135: Where to Start With AI in HR - 5 Tasks to Automate First
EP 136: How to Write a One-Page AI Policy From Scratch
EP 138: AI Is Taking Half of Your Managers’ Job (And That’s the Good News)
EP 140: AI Governance for Small Business - The 4 Things You Actually Need
EP 139: How to Lead Your Team Through AI Fear (Technostress and FOBO)
EP 141: Skills Over Job Titles - Workforce Planning in the Age of AI
EP 142: How to Build AI Fluency on a Shoestring Budget (you’re here)
EP 143: How HR Gets a Seat at the AI Table (coming next week)
Your Action Item
This week, ask your team one honest question: are you using AI for work, and did anyone ever actually show you how? Ask it out loud, in a real conversation, and make it safe to answer truthfully. Whatever they say is your fluency starting line. Then block 30 minutes on the calendar in the next two weeks for a “here’s how we use AI here” session, and write down the three tools you’re standardizing on and the three things that never go into any of them. That’s your first pass. It costs you half an hour.
GET THE MONDAY EMAIL
If this episode resonated, you’ll like the Monday morning email. Every Monday at 5:28am, Kerri sends one practical idea for leaders who want to do this work better, including the conversations behind episodes like this one. 1,000+ leaders. 50%+ open rate. (https://saltandlight.myflodesk.com/saltandlightadvisors)
Full Transcript
AI fluency is becoming a baseline business skill
AI fluency is about to be as common as how to use email in business. Do you believe that? Because I do. That’s where we’re at right now.
We’re going to talk today about AI fluency. This is something that everyone’s going to need. This isn’t going to be a specialist skill that you’re going to hire in your organization, an AI person. This is going to be every person in your organization that needs AI skills. So we’re going to talk today about how to get that up and running, on a shoestring budget that anybody can make work for their organization.
Welcome back to another episode of Don’t Waste the Chaos. I’m your host, Kerri Roberts. I’ve been doing HR for well over 20 years. I did it in corporate, in organizations like manufacturing, finance, higher education, insurance, and then mergers and acquisitions. And then I’ve been running my own HR consulting firm for about three and a half years now. I’m recording this, or you’re probably catching this, at some point in September of 2026.
What I saw when I was in corporate is very similar to what I see now. However, I’m focused on small to mid-sized businesses. And what happens is small to mid-sized businesses think that they just cannot keep up. But what I say is you all are more agile than anyone else. Honestly, you might not have the big IT teams or the big legal teams, but sometimes that makes your life a lot easier, as long as you know what it is that you’re in for.
So let’s get into it today. Specifically when we’re talking about AI fluency, you’ve caught me in the middle of a series where we’re talking about AI and HR and how those work together. And when we’re talking about AI fluency, yes, we’re talking about learning and development today. We’re going to get into some of the policy aspect. We’ve been covering this for a number of weeks, so make sure that you go back and take a look at the other episodes where I’ve been talking about AI in HR.
Make sure to hit that subscribe button. I’m showing up on Apple and on Spotify. I’ve got my YouTube channel. Wherever you’re catching this, please hit that subscribe button. That helps episodes like this get into the hands of other people like you. Otherwise I’m just a small fry out there, and they’re not serving me up on an algorithm unless people are subscribing. So I would love it, pretty please, if you would.
The Excel class my boss made me take in 2008
So AI fluency is turning into this baseline job skill. Everyone needs it. Everyone. This is the way this is working in business. You don’t want your organization to get left behind. This is going to be as basic as email or a spreadsheet eventually.
I can remember when I first got started in HR. The year was 2008. I had used Microsoft Excel a little bit before, you know, had done the basics. But I started working for a guy in a manufacturing and distribution environment, mostly distribution, and he made me go through an Excel class. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have already gone to school, I don’t want to go through this.
But the reality of it was, he was a pivot table guy. He was a formula guy. And he was not going to put up with his team not understanding it. As much as we could train each other a little bit, there was just a ton to go through. So he put on his own little training program, where he utilized Microsoft training and then he did some advanced training for us. And we essentially graduated, and we were all using Excel at a much higher level.
It’s as simple as that. It’s as simple as what my HR leader did for me when it comes to Microsoft Excel all those years ago, just applying those same principles to AI.
The part that no one is telling you is this does not take a huge training budget to build. You are most certainly able to get this going in your organization today. Cheap, high leverage. You’ve already got the platforms. People are already using it. It’s giving that scrappy, self-taught structure, but structure is the key point here. We need to put a little bit of structure in place and a little direction in place. And we also need to know what the human judgment call is going to be, because as we’ve discussed, not everything is going to get placed into the hands of your artificial intelligence.
So fluency is learnable. It’s cheap. And your team is more ready for it than what you think. I’ve got six main points that I’m going to run through today, so it’s going to be a pretty quick, down and dirty episode. Let’s get into it.
70% of job skills change by 2030 (and only 35% think it matters)
When we’re talking about AI skills, that’s not the stuff for your tech person. That’s for everybody now. The ground is moving under our feet.
Some of the data I saw recently was that by 2030, about 70% of the skills used in jobs today are expected to change because of AI. LinkedIn put that data out, in a LinkedIn Work Change Report. And AI is the catalyst. We all know this. But the belief of how this is going to go has not caught up to that data yet. Only about a third of workers, about 35%, say that AI skills are extremely or very important today. Only 35%.
That gap between what’s coming and what people think matters, that’s the opening here, that’s the needle we’re trying to thread today.
So your people are already ahead of you. And this is a really cheap starting point, because your people are already using AI. Probably in their job, but if not outside of their job, they’re using it in some different way.
I was having a conversation with somebody this morning. She’s getting ready to kick off a consulting business, and she was like, you know, I just want to make sure that I’m not creating a job for myself that within a year AI is going to replace. And I totally get that concern. But I see a ton of area that I have no concern about losing space in my consulting firm, in my advisory work, because AI is absolutely fueling my business in a bunch of different ways. But there are a lot of gaps that I have to fill. More gaps, really, than I have time for when it comes to my clients. So I’m not worried about it.
It’s really naming how we’re using it, what we’re using it for, and then knowing when it doesn’t work and when we need the human judgment call, and how we move things forward.
Where AI still needs a human: my blog draft example
Because as many times as I can schedule a task with Claude Cowork, if I don’t open up the system and move it forward, it can do the scheduled task, but where does it go?
I have drafts that get placed onto my Squarespace blog, but I want to review those. I don’t want trash going out into the web with my name on it. So I have the blog drafted. I have it put into Squarespace. That’s amazing. But guess what? Like 70% of the time the spacing is freaking weird. The titles aren’t larger than the words. Every line has a double space under it, so my blogs are like a bazillion lines long. Or everything gets bulleted: once some bullet points get started, then the remainder of the blog is bulleted. And there’s redundancy. Things are repeated. The close is weird. The links aren’t working.
I have to get in there, right? I’ve got to get in there, review it, make it make sense, make it readable. I have to actually review the work. And then I add a photo to it many times, because sometimes what it chooses is weird. Most of the time what it chooses is weird, or it doesn’t choose anything at all. It forgets to add the tags and the categories, or it does, but it leaves out some tags that I think would be very helpful.
It takes a human. All of this takes a human. A lot of it can be done with AI. It’s not going to replace the human race.
So leaders think that almost nobody is using this stuff, but they are. The leaders are wrong. The C-suite estimates about 4% of employees are using AI for at least a third of their daily work. That’s what the C-suite is thinking. Employees say it’s more around 13%, which is three times higher. That was put out by McKinsey in their report, “Superagency in the Workplace.”
So you don’t have to spark adoption from zero. Your people are already using it. It’s something that’s already happening in the background. Whether they’re using it for a draft of a communication, or rewriting their emails, or the policy that needs drafted, your job isn’t to start it. It’s just to make it official, make it safe, make it consistent, put it in a standard operating procedure, make it to where it’s trainable.
We’re not starting from scratch. Fluency is the new baseline. Your people are already ahead of you.
What AI fluency actually is (it’s not prompt hacks)
But let’s talk about what AI fluency actually means, and then what needs to stay human in it.
So, fluency is not prompt hacks. I see on TikTok and on Reels all the time, you know, “use this prompt.” And then before you know it, everyone’s got a Saved by the Bell photo of their family on Facebook. And then everyone’s complaining that their local rural county does not want a data center. I digress, but good grief. We put a prompt out there and people just beat that prompt to death until everyone’s used it.
When I’m talking about AI fluency, I’m not talking about a sheet of prompt hacks or memorizing some tricks. It’s four or five plain things. I’ve talked about these in past episodes, so go back and take a look if you want more detail:
Knowing what tools you’re using. Name the tools that you’re using. Get a business account so it’s more secure. I’m not going to legally advise you on that, but a paid account is going to give you more safety.
Knowing what you can and can’t do in the tools. That’s the policy aspect.
Writing the clear ask. That’s some training on prompting.
Checking the output before you just trust it. My example of the blog post.
And then knowing when to not use it at all. These are the never-evers. These are when we’re never going to use AI. This is what we never put into AI.
That last one is the human layer, and it never leaves your hands. The judgment call on whether you can do employee performance improvement plans in there. Or if there’s a rejection letter that you’re sending out to someone, making sure that sounds like a person, because you owe it to the other human being. Or whether this should even be automated, or if it’s something that we want to continue to do manually.
Fluency without judgment is just faster mistakes. There are so many times where I’m like, ooh, that’s a poor judgment call. AI is speeding up the poor judgment calls. So we have to provide clarity for our employee population, because otherwise we’re going to have some messy judgment calls going on out there.
A year employee-free and $80K saved
Done right, it’s the opposite. A small team can punch way beyond its size if this is done right. But we just have to make sure that we’re very, very clear.
I’ve said before, I used to have two employees that were part to full time, and then I also would carry an intern at any given time. And then I would have a fractional controller, and then I outsourced my podcast production. Right now, when I say intern, I’m saying like an hour a week. I give her way more than that, but she’s working in an externship, so she works way less. So I barely, barely, barely have an intern. And then I have no employees. I’m no longer partnering with a fractional controller. And I’m still outsourcing my podcast production. That’s it.
I’ve mentioned before on the show that that saved me over $80,000 last year. And I did not reinvest that into AI. I just put it in my pocket, because I was also able to save on subscriptions for different technologies that those people were using. So it didn’t cost me a dime more, and in tech subscriptions it actually cost me less. All the money that I saved on them, I was able just to make more revenue. I had a bigger year, top line and bottom line. And as of this month, as of September, I have been employee-free for a year.
So when I say done right, a small team can way out-punch its size, that’s what’s happening. I’m seeing efficiencies gained all over the place.
Now, I will say, I don’t have a desire to scale and build a huge consulting firm. I don’t. I want to automate all of my admin and marketing just as much as I possibly can. And then I want to use my 20-plus years of experience, across industries, across organization sizes, across geographic locations, and I want to let small to mid-sized businesses in on the HR secrets. That’s what I want to do. Hey, here’s what I’ve seen done in the past, here’s the rule, here’s what I would recommend. I want to be their cheat code so they can tend to the people stuff faster.
Knowing what stays human
Now, could you use AI for that? Sure. Do you, if you want to? If you want to trust that.
But what happens is, and I was just talking to somebody else about this the other day, AI can tell you, yes, redo this org structure, these are the roles that you’re short on, you need to do the hiring for these. But there’s a lot of project management that goes around that. And I use AI to help further all of that. Maybe to take my thoughts and put it into a PowerPoint. Or I’m wanting to do a redesign at an organization, so I click that mic button and I talk through: here’s what I’ve got currently, here’s the size of the organization, here are the shortcomings, I think I need these roles, can you give me two to three different visual tracks so I can present this to the ownership team?
I’m using AI. It’s just that I’m prompting it, and then I’m taking it forward. I’m moving that project forward. I’m using logic and I’m asking questions.
Just today I was prompting my AI and I was working on some client work. And it was like, hey, you need to follow up and ask this client X, Y, and Z. And I was like, absolutely not. No. Why would I ask that client that? As a reminder, here’s the scope of work that I have with this client, and that’s getting out of my lane. And it immediately was like, yeah, that’s right.
But I had to read it. I had to think through it. I had to use my knowledge and my skills and my experience to know that. Otherwise I’m sending my clients some weird questions. And then if they answer, now I’m getting involved in a whole different aspect of their business. We’re getting derailed. I’m not going to be able to deliver the work as I promised. And I’m legally not covered in a way that I should be, because I’m dabbling in areas that are not in my span of control.
So we’ve got to use our brains on this one. AI fluency includes knowing what stays human.
The training gap is an unmeasured cost line
Let’s talk about the training gap here, though. As you know, I say this all of the time: HR metrics are finance metrics. So this is absolutely something that’s going to impact your bottom line. Untrained AI use is not free. It’s a risk. It’s an unmeasured cost line.
A few hours of fluency training is one of the cheapest risk controls that you’ll ever buy. And we need this. There’s a risk hiding behind “they’ll figure it out.” Or, “I don’t know exactly how they’re using it, but it’s probably fine, they’re using their judgment.”
Only about 12% of workers, based on some data that I read, got any AI-related training in the past year. About 12%. But a lot of them are using AI. About half of those workers that were polled got some kind of training, but it wasn’t about AI.
So you’ve got people using very powerful tools with almost zero instruction. And they’re confidently doing the wrong things. They’re shipping the wrong stuff, and they’re doing it in a confident way, because they don’t even know that it’s wrong or that it’s something you wouldn’t want.
Let’s say you’ve got a manager that’s putting an employee’s past medical history into AI to figure out if they can provide a reasonable accommodation, because someone’s got some issues going on. Or, this employee is saying that they’re too anxious to come to work, what do I do with that? Okay, we’re getting into some HIPAA potentially. Do we put the employee’s name? What are we putting in this public tool? Because if you don’t say what tool you’re using inside of your business, and have them use a login and a business account, they’re going to be using their own tools. And now it’s a public tool, and what’s the level of security? Gosh, we just don’t know. It’s an unmeasured cost line at that point.
So we really want to make sure that we get some training.
Four cheap levers to build fluency
Let’s talk about how to build fluency cheaply, because I understand, we want to get to the practical meat of the matter. How do we do this on a shoestring budget?
You don’t need a platform. You don’t need an AI-specific trainer, even though there’s a gajillion of them out there and they’re making a lot of money on what they’re doing. Let’s pull the cheapest levers first.
One. Run a quick 30-minute “here’s what we actually use here” session. Just have a lunch and learn. And I would say include some time where you’re going to be asking some questions, and make it a safe space. What tools are we using here? Either we’re brainstorming to see what centralized tools we want to use together, or if you feel strong in this area, then you just make the decision. We are going to be using Manus. We are going to be using Gemini because we’re a Google shop. We are going to be using Claude, and that also means we’re using Cowork and we’re using design inside of Claude, or Code, or whatever we’re using. Or we’re using ChatGPT under this business license. And these are the automations that we’re going to be using. And these are the things that I’m comfortable with connecting it to, our Canva account or whatever accounts. And these are the accounts that I’m not comfortable connecting it to, our QuickBooks or whatever. I have mine connected to my QuickBooks, but everybody’s got their own line that they have to draw.
Two. Create a shared prompt library. Probably somewhere on your share drive, your SharePoint, your OneDrive, your Google Drive, whatever. That’s going to be a single Google Doc of tested prompts for real tasks in your business. And start segmenting them, let’s say by team, by department, by function, by work instruction or standard operating procedure, however you operate.
Three. Name one AI champion. Maybe you’re small enough that you’re just going to name one for your organization. Or maybe you’re naming one per team, who fields questions. It’s not because they have all the answers, it’s because they’re an enthusiast and they will track down the answers. Now, whoever is the field guide of this, whoever that go-to is, they need access to you as the owner, or the senior leader, or whatever, so that decisions can be made. And if you’ve got one of those per department, if it’s not just one person because you’re small, if you’re a little bit bigger and you’ve got one person per department, you need to be having a task force meeting maybe once a month. That’s probably actually slow considering how fast things are changing. Maybe bi-weekly. And the senior leader, you have to attend that. Because we’ve got to figure out, okay, there’s this new tool, there’s this other new tool, what do we want to use? Do we want to change tools? People are using it for this, are we okay with that? People are using it for this, oh, we need to share that with other teams. We need to be having these AI champions together.
Four. Use the free training that you already have available to you. Every one of these tools has training modules. All of them. Not to mention there’s tons of training out on YouTube and what have you. Have somebody put together what the training plan is. And when someone is going to be utilizing AI for their work, they have to complete this and this training. And if they’re in this department, they have to complete this and this training. And if they touch sensitive information, they have to complete this and this training. Whatever it is, create a training module. And guess what? You can ask AI to help you with this. How about that? It’s just magic. But create a training guide and have people follow through with it. You can use free training. That’s a free lever.
Only 22% of employees say there’s a clear AI plan
Clarity is the biggest piece of this. I saw some data that said only 22% of employees say their organization has communicated a clear AI plan. Only 22%. The rest of us are just floating out there wondering what the heck is going on.
Why aren’t we providing clarity? Where leaders are providing clarity, employees are three times more likely to feel prepared to use AI. That seems obvious, right? But three times. Not just one time more likely, three times more likely, when there’s a plan. Gallup put that out there.
So saying, here’s what we use, here’s what’s off limits, here’s who to ask. It costs nothing, and it moves the needle so far. The utilization, the comfort level, the clarity. It moves the needle so far forward. I’m so excited for you.
The BlackBerry story
The last thing I want to talk about is that this is coming for you, whether you plan for it or not. And I’m not trying to say “get scared,” because that’s not the point. These tools are available for you.
Here’s an example. You guys, I was a BlackBerry girl. I just turned 44 this month. I loved my BlackBerry. I liked the little clicky buttons. I liked it. I thought a touchscreen sounded scary. I’ve always had long nails. I just wasn’t interested.
And I was dating a guy, who by the way I’ve been with for 18 years now, and he had an iPhone. And he was like, girl, that BlackBerry is archaic. And I was like, whatever. BlackBerrys are for professionals. I’ve got my email on here, I’ve got my buttons, I’ve got everything that I need. I don’t need your fancy. I’m not trying to web crawl. I’m trying to answer messages and then focus on my life. Which part of me was right about, by the way, because now I spend an awful lot of time on my iPhone.
But I did not get an iPhone for quite a while. I resisted that for quite a while. I resisted it until we were in a position in our relationship where he was pushing me a little bit harder. When we were just dating, he just gave me crap. Eventually, when we were together, he said, this is nonsense, what is your problem? And I said, I just don’t want to deal with it. I was busy at work and I just didn’t want to deal with it, and I felt like what I had was fine.
And he said, if I bought you an iPhone, if I transferred service from your BlackBerry to your iPhone and I got it all set up, would you try it for a week? And if it doesn’t work out, I will take it back and I will get you everything set back up on your BlackBerry, we won’t get rid of it yet. And I was like, I can tell you right now, I’m going to be clickety-clacking on those buttons in seven days.
Well, guess what happened. I’m recording on my iPhone right now, 18 years later. And it’s been awesome.
And the BlackBerry died, because it didn’t pivot. Because it didn’t pivot with what the market was demanding and what the market was putting into the hands of users. And I was holding back.
So right now you might be holding back in your business, because you think it’s unnecessary, because you see all of the AI slop and the crappy flyers that are put out there, and you’re like, I don’t need that in my business. And here’s what I would tell you: you are being uneducated on what you can actually accomplish with AI. Because it goes so far beyond Saved by the Bell photos of your family looking like it’s the late 80s or early 90s.
Even those are cool. I didn’t do one, because I was just annoyed that everybody did it. And not to mention, I was an 80s baby, so I already know what I look like in that time frame, in my windbreaker and my permed hair and my giant bangs with the Aqua Net. I already know what I look like. I don’t need a new photo of that. I could just fast forward and go to my mom’s house to the good old-fashioned printed photos that we’ve got. We can see me then.
But AI is so much more than that. You are using AI in a number of ways right now anyway, whether it’s on your phone or in your computer, in your HRIS, in your finance platforms. There are things that are tapping into artificial intelligence now.
So when you’re ready, don’t be a late adopter. Just be somebody who provides clarity for their business.
A client example: five repeatable tasks per manager
I was thinking through what’s a way that I could describe to you that I’ve done this with a client lately.
I had a group of managers at a client of mine, and I sat down with them. We figured out what their five most repeatable tasks were per person. And then we wrote a solid prompt for each one of those, and started building scheduled tasks around all of them. But we worked together as a team. We made sure that there were no legal landmines around them. And then we created a quick guide afterward for training for people on their teams.
We didn’t just get on there and play, is what I’m saying. We figured out what their most repeatable tasks were, and some of them were similar across these management roles, things they decided to do around reporting, meetings, one-on-ones. And then we created the prompts for those. And then we created scheduled tasks for those, so they would auto-run. That took a little bit of setup. And then we created documents in their standard operating procedures on how we were utilizing it. And then I put together a little one-pager for them to share with their teams at their next one-on-ones or their next team meetings, to explain how they were using it as managers, to encourage their teams to use it.
That was just kind of like our first glimpse. But what we decided was, we weren’t going to do performance improvement plans out the gate. We were going to do the repeatable tasks first and get comfortable, and then see where they went from there.
Where to start if this already sounds like a part-time job
That’s just a simple way to get started. But if you’re listening and you’re like, yeah, simple, sounds so simple, sounds like a part-time job, that’s what organizations like me are here for.
First, I want to do an HR audit with you to see what your systems currently are, automated or not automated. And then we do a gap analysis to determine what your business and HR foundation look like. And then we would get into your automations once we got into a contract together.
So if you’re reaching out to me: I’m not an AI company, but I use AI. And this is what I think. When you reach out to an AI company, they’re going to get AI set up across your organization, but likely in your production area. That’s where I would start if I was them. For me, I’m going to focus on AI in your HR function and your people operations function. So it kind of depends on what your desire is.
To me, if you’re putting a bunch of systems on top of a very wobbly foundation, where you don’t have job descriptions, where you don’t have good policies, where you don’t have clarity for your employees, I know I’m an HR gal, but I personally think that that sounds messy. So I would start with your HR foundation first. We will integrate AI along the way.
Couple of things that you can do if you’re not ready to hop into a commitment with me. I’ve got a free HR audit out there, saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit. That’s a free, quick 10-minute audit, gives you a score, lets you know if you are in a risky spot, if you need attention, or if you’ve got a solid HR foundation, and you should brag to your friends about that if you do.
I’ve also got my HR coursework out there if you want to start on a self-guided path. Or if you’re listening and you’re like, I’ve got an office manager that I really want to start picking up some HR responsibilities, or a green HR person, this is perfect for both of those tracks. Saltandlightadvisors.com/resources. I’ve got it set up on Foundational HR, HR Operating Systems, and Strategic HR, so they’ve got three different tracks that they can take as they advance.
And then of course I’ve got my book, The HR Easy Button. First one’s out, second one’s in editing. How long am I going to say that? I don’t know. Hope somebody holds me to that.
But if you want to just reach out and see what a partnership with me can look like, go to saltandlightadvisors.com/contact. Just shoot a message and say, I don’t know what I need, but let’s talk. Those are my favorite messages, because most generally, if we talk, I can let you know what you need. And not in a salesy way. I can just say, hey, this is a fit, this is not a fit.
Your one honest question this week
This week, ask your team one honest question. Are you using AI for work, and did anyone ever actually show you how? Whatever they say is your fluency starting line. That’s where you’re starting.
And next week we’re going to go up one level: how HR gets a seat at the AI table, even if you are an HR pro of one, or you’re an office manager running it. So we’re going to move forward with that.
I’ll say, I don’t like “seat at the table.” I’m just using that language because that’s common and that’s what people use. I say if you show your intelligence and you speak with confidence, we don’t have to talk about a seat at the table, because people just are clearing off a space for you. I’ve never had to fight for a seat at the table. And you can bet your rear end, if I had to, I’m out. I’m out. I hope you are too.
Listen, I know that determining what the next steps are when it comes to AI and your business can feel like chaos, but this work is worth it. So don’t waste the chaos. Embrace it. I’ll see you next Tuesday.
Resources To Keep Building
If your team is already using AI and nobody has told them what’s allowed, take the free HR Audit to see whether your people systems are actually set up to hold up to it. Go to saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit
🎙️ Listen to Don’t Waste the Chaos - This episode: https://youtu.be/3NZhvDgj9a8?si=hPqcEOHflTomdLzI.
📚 Explore the HR coursework - Self-paced courses, tools, and resources to build your HR systems step by step. 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/resources
✉️ Get the Monday Email - One practical idea for leaders, every Monday at 5:28am. 1,000+ leaders, 50%+ open rate. 👉 saltandlight.myflodesk.com/saltandlightadvisors
Need fractional HR support or want to talk through a specific challenge? 👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/contact
