When the government expanded its AI Skills Boost programme in January, the FSB’s Tina McKenzie welcomed it with a number that stuck with us. Just under half of small businesses (46%) say they don’t yet have the skills or knowledge to use AI well.
The response has been big. Free online AI courses are now open to every adult in the UK through the AI Skills Hub, with a target of 10 million workers trained by 2030, at least 2 million of them in small and medium-sized businesses. Courses run from 20-minute introductions up to around nine hours, and finishing one earns a government-backed digital badge.
We think that’s good news, and we’d encourage any small business owner to have a look. But we’ve also spent a long time watching how people actually learn to use new tools at work, and we don’t think a course on its own closes the gap that 46% describes.
Knowing about AI and using it on your job
The research published alongside the launch found that only 21% of UK workers feel confident using AI at work, and that micro businesses are 45% less likely to adopt AI than large ones. Enterprise Nation’s survey of small firms in June found something similar: 21% use AI regularly, and only 6% have built it into their daily work.
That last figure is the interesting one. Plenty of small business owners have tried ChatGPT or something like it. Most of them have watched a video or read a guide. Very few have got to the point where AI is part of how they quote for a job, chase an invoice or write their product descriptions every week.
The reason is fairly simple. An introductory course shows you what the tool can do using somebody else’s example. Then you go back to your own business, with your own customers and your own messy spreadsheet, and you have to work out the rest by yourself. Most people try it a couple of times, get a middling result and go back to doing it the old way.
There’s a second problem too. A lot of people are already using AI, just badly. Staff paste things into chatbots without anyone knowing, and owners use it for one task and assume it’s useless for everything else. What’s missing is judgement: knowing when AI will save you an hour, when it’ll cost you one, and how much of a job to hand over.
Learning it on real work
Our approach starts from the work people already do. Rather than teaching AI as a separate subject, learners pick real tasks from their own business and use AI on those, deciding each time how much of the work AI should take on. That might be using it to analyse some customer feedback, brainstorm ideas for a promotion, draft a supplier email, or work alongside them on a bigger piece of work. Sometimes the right answer is not to use it at all, and that’s part of what people learn.
Because the evidence comes from their own work, what they finish with is useful on Monday morning, and it’s something they can show.
Two ways in
The Level 1 Award in AI Essentials for Business, from SFEDI Awards, is a regulated qualification that can be delivered as a two-day workshop. It suits owners and teams who are new to AI or have only dabbled, and it gets them from “I’ve tried it” to using it with some confidence on everyday tasks.
The Level 2 Award in Applied AI Skills for Business goes further. It’s a nationally recognised qualification, aligned to the UK’s AI Skills Competency Framework, built around applying AI to real business tasks and showing sound judgement about how and when to use it. Learners choose six from nine optional units, so it fits different kinds of business.
Both work alongside the free government courses. If your team has done an introduction on the AI Skills Hub, a qualification like these is a sensible next step, and it turns a badge into evidence of what they can actually do.
Talk to us
If you run a small business, support small businesses, or train people who do, we’d like to hear from you. Get in touch with the IOEE team to find out how the Level 1 and Level 2 awards could work for your business or your learners.