From AI couch potato to AI runner

There is a marked difference between people who occasionally do a little bit of exercise and those who consistently put in the work.

“Just as athletes need proper training and equipment to perform at their best, our employees need access to AI tools and continuous learning opportunities to achieve peak performance and drive business value.”

It’s the same for employees using AI. Those who have started to build use of the tools into their routine, who have learned to ask “How can I use AI to help me do this better? Or faster?” are readily identifiable compared to those who are still on their couches.

This is the lesson we can learn from sports.

Just as athletes need proper training and equipment to perform at their best, our employees need access to AI tools and continuous learning opportunities to achieve peak performance and drive business value.

Bringing 45,000 employees on the journey

I am privileged to lead the team responsible for the technology employee experience of 45,000 talented ANZ employees. More than working to provide access to tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot and Github Copilot, we are focused on developing AI literacy in our teams. This includes adoption as the first step and then building a culture of regular use, experimentation and connection for greater productivity across the organisation.

Leading from the front

A recent McKinsey report demonstrates the challenges facing business worldwide.

While it is acknowledged business leaders must engage with their workforce and build optimism around AI to stay competitive. Yet, 47% of C-suite leaders believe they were developing and releasing gen AI tools too slowly. A key reason for delays is the talent skill gap.

At ANZ we talk about how we’re building a digitally savvy organization. That is to say that we in the Technology division have a role in leading and enabling our whole business acquire new skill and capabilities and grow them – across cloud, data, cybersecurity, and…of course…AI. 

We’ve chosen to invest in range of approaches and initiatives that have delivered value in their own right but also have served as different hooks for our leaders to choose to engage and participate.

• AI Partnerships: We’re leveraging our strategic partnerships with global industry leaders (think Google, Microsoft, Amazon & ServiceNow) – availing ourselves of their latest products, and their insights and expertise.  
• CEO sponsored executive education: We designed a series of AI talks for executives to walk them through the advances and opinions of industry professionals. This helped leaders understand the ethics, safety concerns, capabilities of the tools and brainstorm ways generative AI could help solve business problems.
• Centre for experiential learning: With our partner Microsoft, we set up an AI Immersion Centre to allow hands on experimentation, and create space for reflection and connection – fed by research on experiential learning. Since its launch in 2024, we have hosted 70 sessions with 1,200 participants and 97% per cent recent report they will recommend it to their peers.
• Innovation incubator – Our Shark Tank has provided opportunities for teams to pitch ideas to a panel (incl our CEO). Where a Shark Tank pitch is successful, it receives seed funding for rapid experimentation and iteration. Experiments usually run for 1-2 months before reporting back.  Our Shark Tank incubator will continue to help us identify and connect for high value AI opportunities.

Throughout these interactions we’ve emphasised the importance of keeping our people at the centre. Generative AI is a powerful tool, but its effectiveness relies on human oversight – asking the right questions and applying their deep understanding of the customer, business or societal context. That’s how businesses can unlock AI’s full potential.

We’re learning to ask ourselves and our colleagues questions like “How can I use AI to improve this?” and “Can AI do this better than me?”

An important step in ANZ’s journey was giving people access to the tools. Again, this is important in and of itself and sends the right signal. ANZ is embracing AI, and the opportunities it brings.

Since the rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot, over 16,000 employees have tried it, with about 5,000 using it weekly, leading to increased efficiency and innovation

We’ve seen our employees using Copilot to speed up their day-to-day tasks, with more than 7,000 emails drafted in the past month and another 1,000 summarised. In addition, Copilot was used to transcribe more than 1,000 meetings/calls and produce summaries in mere seconds – saving many hours. 

In addition, we’ve seen our people leaders embrace Microsoft 365 Copilot for Work as they discover how it can help locate messages, summarise meeting transcripts and kick start emails, PowerPoints and Word documents.

These and other tools have accelerated our time-to-insights across the organization and freed our employees to focus on more strategic work, empowering our people to deliver the best possible outcomes and enhancing productivity.

We were also early adopters of GitHub Copilot, which elevated our engineering abilities across the bank. By automating parts of their workflow and providing support in real time, GitHub Copilot has allowed engineers to work faster and with greater accuracy.

Since commencing the rollout of GitHub in October 2023, we now have 3,200 engineers using it globally. In the month of December, more than half of those engineers used the tool for programming suggestions. Based on the data we’ve seen, over 40 per cent of these suggestions are accepted by the engineer, with this figure steadily rising – and in the last six months, 11.5% of our code was written by AI.

This success has helped shape our ambition to “deliver twice the value in half the time”.

Or, as our CTO Tim Hogarth says, it’s made our "average engineers good, good engineers great, and great engineers more relaxed."

Bringing AI to life

Our AI Immersion Centre, in partnership with Microsoft, offers 90-minute, hands-on AI sessions for executives, leaders, and employees, featuring booths and experiments to build practical skills.

The experience sparks curiosity and fuels confidence. Everyone who completes the session is asked to go forth and share.

A standout example of this is our “prompt library,” where employees exchange effective AI prompts, learn from each other and hone their skills to “prompt like a pro.”

Through the Centre we have showcased early business cases with Copilot and other AI tools to help spark further creativity, and to prompt our leaders to ask their teams, “How can we use AI on this to not only simplify the process but to create or unlock value?” The aim being to enhance our products, services and impact.

Strategic partnerships with the best in the industry

So, what is next? Our strategic partnerships with industry leaders will ensure we stay at the forefront of AI innovation.

We are firmly focused on leveraging AI to enhance our employee experience. We see a future in which Agentic AI, which functions like a human bot, will be the way we work in the future. 

Agentic AI is not just about automation; it’s about creating an AI-powered workforce of agents that work alongside our people, elevating the employee experience and helping them achieve more. By embedding this into our daily workflows, we are setting ourselves up to lead in both innovation and productivity.

This will allow our employees to concentrate on problem-solving and critical thinking, while AI proactively handles repetitive tasks, effectively becoming a valuable teammate.

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In the end: guardrails

It’s a big topic. And an even bigger opportunity. But it’s important to stay grounded and not get carried away. A final point on guardrails. Yes, we’re moving fast, but we’re not racing without safety measures. We are balancing curiosity with clear guardrails. It’s essential.

At ANZ, we treat AI as we do our other tools, with guidelines ensuring the tools support insights and speed up processes while adding value, at scale, but don’t replace human judgment or leaders’ decision-making accountabilities.

We make it clear that responsible and ethical use of AI is everyone's duty.

Curiosity, leadership, value, and accountability are key to our success with AI while staying true to our purpose—shaping a world where people and communities thrive. As we embrace Agentic AI, we’re creating an environment where employees thrive and the business accelerates, all while ensuring ethical AI use with human oversight at the core. With a clear vision and strong leadership, we’re ready to unlock even greater possibilities.

Jo Hayes is Divisional Chief Information Officer for Group Services at ANZ Bank