Enterprise AI upskilling is the structured process of building generative AI capability across an organisation, moving employees from awareness of tools like Microsoft Copilot to their confident, daily use on real work. On 13 August 2026, that discipline earned external recognition. The programme that Bots & People runs with Daimler Truck won two awards at the 2026 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards, the longest- running awards programme in Human Capital Management.
The programme took Silver in Learning and Development and Bronze in Future of Work, both in the category Best Extended Enterprise Learning Program. The winning entry documented an AI upskilling initiative that reached more than 20,000 participations across Daimler Truck.
TL;DR
• The 2026 Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Awards recognised the Bots & People and Daimler Truck AI upskilling programme with Silver in Learning and Development and Bronze in Future of Work.
• Both awards sit in the same category, Best Extended Enterprise Learning Program, for an entry built around more than 20,000 participations.
• The recognition matters because Brandon Hall judges entries on measurable business impact through an independent evaluation, not on marketing spend.
What did Daimler Truck and Bots & People win?
Bots & People and Daimler Truck won two 2026 Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Awards for the same programme: Silver in the Learning and Development category and Bronze in the Future of Work category. Both awards were given under Best Extended Enterprise Learning Program, for an entry titled "20,000+ participations with AI Upskilling".
The two medals recognise one body of work from two angles. The Learning and Development award looks at how well the programme was designed and delivered as a learning initiative. The Future of Work award looks at how the same programme prepares an organisation for the way generative AI is changing daily work. Winning in both categories shows the initiative held up against two evaluation lenses rather than one.
Why does a Brandon Hall award carry weight?
The Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards have run since 1993, which makes them the oldest and largest awards programme in Human Capital Management. The industry often calls them the Academy Awards of Human Capital Management. Winners are chosen through an independent evaluation rather than a public vote or a sponsorship.
Entries are judged by a panel of independent industry experts and Brandon Hall Group analysts against a published framework. That framework weighs alignment to the business need, programme design and delivery, and measurable outcomes after launch. For an L&D leader comparing training providers, an award decided on business impact says more than a vendor claim, because a third party applied the same criteria to every submission.
The programme behind the recognition
The award-winning programme is an enterprise AI upskilling initiative that Bots & People delivered with Daimler Truck. It reached more than 20,000 participations across 33 countries, and it was built around Microsoft Copilot rather than a generic tool overview.
Two figures anchor the entry. The first is scale: more than 20,000 participations across 33 countries moved AI training from a single pilot into an operating reality for a global manufacturer. The second is adoption: Copilot Chat usage rose by more than 85% among trained employees, which is the metric that separates a tool sitting idle from one that people actually use.
Microsoft Copilot sits at the centre of the programme, and Microsoft is a partner in the delivery. The design pairs the software licence with role-relevant training and live sessions, so employees learn to apply Copilot to their own tasks instead of watching a demonstration. That pairing is the point. A licence grants access to a tool, and training turns access into daily use.
What this signals for L&D leaders
The clearest signal for L&D leaders is that adoption follows training, not licences. An organisation can buy Microsoft Copilot for every employee and still see little change in how work gets done, because access on its own does not build capability. The Daimler Truck programme earned recognition because it treated capability as the goal and used the licence as the starting point.
This is the argument Bots & People has made from the start. An AI tool without a trained user is a very expensive screensaver. The award gives that argument independent backing: a programme that put structured training around Copilot produced adoption at scale, and an external panel judged the result worth two medals.
"Confidence is what turns an expensive licence into something people actually open. AI adoption is a people problem long before it is a technology one."
Nico Bitzer, Co-Founder, Bots & People
For leaders planning their own AI training initiative, the first question is not how many licences to buy. The question is how to move employees to confident, daily use, and how to measure who has reached that point. Teams weighing where their own workforce stands today can start with the free AI Readiness Check, which maps current AI maturity in a few minutes.
The programmes that produce adoption tend to share three things: role-specific training so the tool maps to real tasks, manager involvement so daily use is expected and supported, and a way to track who has reached confident, independent use. Bots & People describes that end state as Level 3 on its five-level AI competency framework, the point where an employee applies AI to real work without a trainer standing by.
Read here how Daimler Truck’s people went from being curious about AI to building with it, and how hands-on learning helped turn AI skills into real application.
