AI training for HR Directors. Roll out AI to your workforce — without it being a sheep dip.
If your CEO wants AI everywhere and your workforce hasn’t agreed yet, this is the apprenticeship pathway that gives HR the AI Strategy, Governance, and Delivery & Transformation toolkit to lead the rollout properly. Levy-funded or 100% funded for SMEs.
The four artefacts your CEO and risk committee actually want
- AI Workforce Impact Assessment — HR-specific, role-by-role
- 90-Day AI Rollout Plan — phased, comms-led, measurable
- AI Governance Framework — risk register, audit, monitoring
- AI Policy & Acceptable Use Guidance — workforce-ready
Three things are true at the same time, and you’re holding all of them.
Generic AI training won’t solve any of them. Off-the-shelf AI “awareness” courses get your workforce comfortable but leave you with no governance, no comms plan, no measurable outcome. Here’s the real shape of the job.
Your CEO wants AI everywhere
The board has decided. Productivity gains, cost-out, competitive parity — pick the headline. The mandate is set; the timing is not negotiable. You inherited it, you didn’t scope it.
Your workforce hasn’t agreed yet
Some are excited. Most are quietly worried about their jobs. A vocal few are openly hostile. Unions are watching. You need a rollout that respects all of that and still ships.
You need the artefacts to govern, communicate and scale
Risk committee wants a policy. Comms wants a script. ExCo wants an impact assessment. Operations wants a 90-day plan. You don’t need awareness; you need documents.
Which of the three Level 5 AI Apprenticeship Units is right for HR Directors.
The three Level 5 AI Units (AU0009/10/11) are the Skills England-approved leadership pathway for AI. AU0011 (Delivery & Transformation) is the strongest single fit for HR Directors — it covers workforce impact, change communication, audit and monitoring. AU0010 (Governance) and AU0009 (Strategy) sit alongside it for the full toolkit.
AI Delivery & Transformation
Workforce impact assessment, change communication, pilot-to-programme, audit and monitoring. This is the HR Director’s unit.
AI Adoption, Procurement & Governance
The risk-committee unit. AI policy, acceptable use, vendor selection, risk register, audit framework — everything your governance forum will ask for.
AI Strategy & Opportunity
Sets the AI direction the People function follows. Walk away with your AI Strategy on a Page — the one document that aligns ExCo to what HR is doing about AI.
Four sponsor-signed deliverables your CEO, risk committee and ExCo will recognise.
Every deliverable is signed off by the learner’s organisational sponsor — not graded coursework, but board-ready documentation produced inside your business, against your operating model.
AI Workforce Impact Assessment
HR-specific, role-by-role view of where AI changes the work. Tied to your skills framework, your job families, your union landscape. The artefact your risk committee, ExCo and unions all want to see first.
90-Day AI Rollout Plan
Phased adoption plan: comms cadence, training waves, pilot cohorts, governance checkpoints, measurable outcomes. Not a slide deck — an operating plan you can run.
AI Governance Framework
AI risk register, audit cadence, monitoring approach, escalation routes, alignment to EU AI Act risk tiers and NIST AI RMF. The framework your risk forum signs off and your auditors accept.
AI Policy & Acceptable Use Guidance
Workforce-ready policy and AUP. Plain English, legally aligned, integrated with existing HR policies. Designed to be published — not stored in a SharePoint folder.
Two funding paths. Both end at £0 to your bottom line.
The Level 5 AI Apprenticeship Units are an Apprenticeship-funded product, which means you don’t pay for them out of your L&D budget. Whether you’re Levy or non-Levy, the £750 per unit per learner is government-funded.
Levy-funded route
- £750 per unit drawn from your Levy account — the pot you’re already paying into and almost certainly under-spending
- No L&D budget impact — this is not a line item on your training plan
- Counts towards your AI capability uplift KPI for ExCo and Board reporting
- Levy expires after 24 months — using it on Units is “use it or lose it” spend
100% government-funded for SMEs
- Government covers £750 per unit per learner in full — not 95%, not 99%, one hundred per cent
- No Levy account needed — we walk you through the Apprenticeship Service set-up in 20 minutes
- No co-investment, no 5%, nothing to find from your budget
- Same Skills England-approved standard the FTSE 250 are doing — free for you
Built for the whole People leadership team.
Funding rules don’t distinguish between HR job titles — if they make AI decisions for the workforce, they are eligible. Most cohorts mix HR Directors with their senior team, which deliberately speeds up adoption inside the function.
The six questions HR Directors actually ask.
Will my team need to do technical AI work on this programme?
No. The Level 5 AI Apprenticeship Units are leadership-level qualifications, not technical AI build training. Your team will design strategy, build governance, write workforce impact assessments and rollout plans. They will not be writing code or building models. The technical AI work sits on the L4 AI & Automation Practitioner standard, which is a different product for a different audience.
How does this fit with our existing L&D budget?
It doesn’t touch your L&D budget. If your paybill is over £3m, the £750 per unit per learner is drawn from your Apprenticeship Levy account (the pot you’re already paying into and almost certainly under-spending). If your paybill is under £3m, the government covers 100% of the cost directly. Either way, £0 to your bottom line. See the funding-clarity guide.
Can I send one person or do we need a cohort?
Either works. There is no minimum cohort size for the open cohort — your HR Director or Head of HR can join a multi-employer cohort with other senior leaders. For a closed cohort customised to your organisation’s HR governance, change framework and policy environment, the minimum is 8 learners. Most HR teams start with one and scale.
Will this comply with our HR governance committee requirements?
Yes — by design. AU0010 (AI Adoption, Procurement & Governance) is specifically built to produce sponsor-signed AI governance artefacts: AI risk register, AI policy, acceptable use guidance, vendor selection rubric, and audit/monitoring approach. These are the exact artefacts your governance committee will ask for. The deliverables are signed by the learner’s organisational sponsor, which means your HR Director walks out with board-ready documentation, not coursework.
Does this prepare us for the EU AI Act and NIST AI RMF?
Yes. The Level 5 Apprenticeship Standard is Skills England-approved and the curriculum explicitly covers EU AI Act risk classifications, NIST AI Risk Management Framework, ISO 42001 alignment, UK ICO AI guidance, and DSIT AI assurance approaches. Your HR team won’t just know these frameworks — they’ll produce artefacts mapped against them.
What if we already have someone on an L7 Senior Leader programme?
The L5 AI Apprenticeship Units sit alongside an L7 nicely. L7 develops the senior leader as a senior leader; the L5 Units give them the specific AI Strategy, AI Governance and AI Delivery toolkit they need to lead the rollout. Many of our HR Directors are doing both — the L7 for breadth of leadership, an L5 AI Unit (commonly AU0011 Delivery & Transformation) for the AI specialism. The funding rules allow both, as long as they cover different content.
Ready to lead your workforce AI rollout properly?
Book a 20-minute call. We’ll tell you which Unit fits your HR function, what your team is eligible for, and how to start — whether you’re Levy-funded or non-Levy.