"It saves me 30% of my time a week." What our learners told a room full of employers.

This week we joined the Strategic Board for Skills Advancement (SBSA) and BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, for their summer conference on AI, STEM and the future skills workforce. Over three hours the line-up ran from national policy to the NHS, from end-point assessment to an android called Ada.

For our slot, we did the thing we always prefer to do. We stopped talking and handed the microphone to our learners.

More on them shortly, because what they said deserves to be the headline. First, the bigger picture.

The message from every direction: AI is a people problem

The most striking thing about the afternoon was how consistently every speaker, from every angle, landed on the same conclusion.

Tony Pitchford of BCS set the scene with some sobering numbers: half of UK organisations report tech skills shortages, and most AI initiatives are currently failing. Not because the technology does not work, but because businesses lack the skills to implement what it produces. He also previewed something we think every employer should have on their radar: the UK's emerging AI assurance profession, a framework for demonstrating that the people using AI in your business are competent, transparent and trusted to use it well.

James Freed of NHS England, speaking from inside one of the largest and most scrutinised organisations in the country, put it more bluntly: rolling out AI without training your people is destined to fail. Technology adoption is workforce development, or it is nothing. That matches what we found writing about AI adoption in the NHS and local government.

Carlo Weaver of Apprentigo, a former degree apprentice who went from difficult beginnings to founding a platform now used by over 600,000 people, showed the other end of the pipeline: AI is already reshaping how the next generation finds apprenticeships in the first place.

Different speakers, different sectors, one conclusion. The gap is not in the tools. It is in the people, and people can be developed.

The most important voices in the room

Which brings us to our segment. Our own James Fenton hosted two learners currently on our Level 4 AI & Automation Practitioner apprenticeship, and asked them to be honest about the experience. No rehearsal, no script.

Kate Lester, Founder and CEO, Diamond Logistics and Technology Group

Kate has put four of her fifteen-strong team through the programme, herself included, in an eight-figure, technology-led business. Her verdict on the return so far:

And on the course itself:

She built a working website in five minutes after her first lesson, and she has already recommended the programme to a CIO in her Cranfield business growth network.

Fi Rees-White, Group Head of Integrated Production at Oliver, part of the Brandtech Group

Fi told a different story with the same ending. Returning from maternity leave into a field that had moved "like dog years" in twelve months, she scrolled the course list and deliberately picked, in her words, the one that scared her the most. She did not want to give up her leadership development to do it, so we built her a programme that combined both:

A few sessions in, she has automated her six-monthly HR review process, built an agent that analyses talent contracts, and is saving half a day every week, a figure she expects to keep climbing. Her advice to anyone weighing it up:

The part we liked most

What we loved most was their honesty about the challenges too. The off-the-job learning is a real commitment. Timing matters, and supporting your team members through the early weeks matters.

That candour is exactly why learner voices beat provider claims every time. We could tell you the programme works. It lands rather differently when a CEO who paid for four seats says it in front of a room of her peers.

What this means for your business

If there was one practical takeaway from the day, it is this: start with a skills analysis, not a software purchase. Every failed AI initiative the conference heard about failed at the human layer. Every success story, including the two above, started with structured, applied learning built around real work.

That is precisely what an apprenticeship does, and with the AI & Automation Practitioner standard (ST1512) now established, that development can be fully funded through the Growth & Skills Levy. If your team leans more towards Claude specifically, the Claude Apprenticeship is the same standard taught through Claude, and for senior people the short AI Leadership units run to 30 hours.

One timing note worth knowing: the funding rules tighten from August, with co-investment rising to 25% and levy funds now expiring after 12 months rather than 24. If this is on your list for this year, earlier is cheaper.

If you would like to explore what that could look like for your team, we would love to talk. And if you would rather hear it from the people who matter most, well, you just did.

The TESS Group delivers AI, leadership and professional apprenticeships to more than 10,000 learners, rated Good by Ofsted with a 4.9/5 learner rating. Quotes are as given by the speakers at the conference. Recordings of the sessions will be shared by the SBSA over the coming weeks.