Building Foundational AI Capability at Outcomes Star
How a practical workshop series moved a cautious team from hesitation to confident, everyday AI use.
Client: Outcomes Star
Industry: Social Impact, Health & Social Care, Training & Development
Services Provided: AI Skills Foundations Programme
Key Highlights:
- Confidence and capability rose across all seven core competencies measured
- The number of employees who had never used AI for work fell from 23% to zero
- 58% of the team now use AI daily or weekly
- Overall programme satisfaction was 4 out of 5
The Challenge
Outcomes Star is a leading provider of outcomes measurement tools and training used across children, family, housing, work and social care. The organisation had already built strong AI governance through its internal working group and AI Policy. The next step was building AI capability and confidence across the wider team.
Nearly a quarter had never used generative AI for work, and many wanted to take the first step without adding to their workload. The aim was to give the organisation a shared understanding of what AI could do for them and a space for safe, practical experimentation.
The Solution
Starting with a discovery session with the AI Working Group to identify organisational priorities for AI training, Ethical Sales then designed and delivered a bespoke AI Skills Foundations Programme of virtual 90-minute workshops.
Starting from a baseline survey and aligned to Outcomes Star’s AI policy, the sessions aimed to build confidence and capability for all involved:
Workshop 1: AI fundamentals and safe use. What generative AI can and can’t do, where its limits lie, and how to comply with Outcomes Star’s AI policy, with guided hands-on practice.
Workshop 2: Prompt Like a Pro. A proven prompting framework, with role-relevant examples and practice adapting prompts to real work tasks.
Workshop 3: Visual tools and workflows. Using AI for research, drafting and sense-making across a whole task, plus visual and diagramming tools, with examples drawn from Outcomes Star’s own work.
Workshop 4: Sharing progress and future possibilities. Showcasing real internal use cases with a facilitated look at how AI could support the organisation’s services and clients.
Workshop handouts, homework and an email help desk ensured learning continued between sessions.
The Results
The team moved from hesitation to active, everyday use. Capability and confidence grew across all seven competencies measured on a five-point scale, with structured prompting seeing the biggest jump, from 2.1 to 3.6.
“I have improved my prompts by bringing structure to them, and this has definitely improved the AI outputs.” Programme participant, Outcomes Star
Team members reported using Copilot for deeper research and thinking tasks, such as “gathering academic research in a way that fits with the format and quality level I need” and to “improve communication style, think through concepts and to check perspective.”
By the final session, the conversation had shifted from “how could AI help me?” to “how could AI support our services and clients?”
Looking Ahead
“We were really pleased with the feedback, and the working group felt it met our objectives, so thank you.
We’re now reviewing our policy and running an audit to see who’s using what, so we can keep the AI conversation going across the organisation and keep making the most of what AI can do for us.” Head of HR and Programme Sponsor, Outcomes Star
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