Upskilling 20,000 participants in AI in Six Months with Daimler Truck

When new AI tools are rolled out at scale, something interesting often happens.

Some people jump in right away. Others hesitate. And many aren’t quite sure how these tools fit into their day-to-day work.

That’s exactly the situation Daimler Truck found itself in when Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat became available across the company. The tools were there - but confidence, consistency, and everyday use varied widely. 😯

Together with Bots & People, Daimler Truck set out to change that. Not with mandatory training or long theory sessions, but with learning that felt useful, practical, and worth people’s time.

Six months later, more than 20,000 participants around the world had taken part. 😳👏🏻

Starting with a simple question

The starting point wasn’t “How do we teach AI?”

It was “Where does work feel unnecessarily hard today?” 👀

Participants were spending hours writing emails, summarising meetings, preparing documents, and searching for the right words. If AI could help with those everyday tasks, even a little, the impact would add up quickly.

At the same time, Daimler Truck wanted to make sure AI was used in a safe and responsible way - with shared standards, not guesswork.

So the goal became clear: help people use AI well, in ways that actually help them, and feel good about doing so. 💜

Learning that fits into real life

Together, Daimler Truck and Bots & People designed a multi-format learning ecosystem built around how people actually work.

Instead of relying on a single training format, the program blended:

• Live sessions and deep-dive workshops with real business use cases
• Role-specific spotlight sessions for functions like Sales, Finance, Production, R&D, and IT
• Prompting challenges with short daily exercises to build habits
• Gamified formats like AI contests and treasure hunts to encourage experimentation
• Dedicated leadership sessions to ensure top-down alignment

All formats followed a 70:20:10 learning model, balancing hands-on experience, social learning, and structured knowledge.

The result: learning that felt relevant, practical, and immediately useful - not theoretical or abstract.

No pressure, no mandates

One important decision made early on: participation would be completely voluntary.

To make that work, the team focused on removing friction. Signing up was easy. Sessions were free for all participants. Communication was clear and relatable.

Instead of talking about “large language models,” the message was simple:

This might save you time. Come and see if it helps.

People responded.

Rolling it out, step by step

The initiative was rolled out in three waves.

It started in the DACH region, where formats were tested and improved. From there, it expanded to North America, and finally to teams across LATAM, Japan, Turkey, and other regions.

Along the way, everything was adapted to local needs and delivered in six languages, so people could learn in a way that felt natural to them.

What changed

After six months, the results spoke for themselves.

More than 20,000 people took part in over 350 live sessions. Monthly active usage of M365 Copilot Chat increased by 85%, and over 90% of participants reported feeling more confident using AI at work.

Many participants reported saving one to two hours a week on routine tasks. Just as importantly, AI was being used in a consistent and compliant way across the organisation.

The entire initiative has been recognized during a nomination for HR Awards in Berlin and featured during LearnTec - one of Europe’s leading learning & technology conferences.

What this shows

This initiative showed that you don’t need to force people to learn about AI.

If learning is practical, friendly, and clearly connected to everyday work, people are curious. They show up. And they keep going.

For Daimler Truck, this was an important step towards building long-term AI skills across the company. For us at Bots & People, it’s a great example of what happens when learning is designed with people - not just tools - in mind.