Get ready for AI

Successful AI adoption often needs several areas of your business to work together.

Before you start, it's worth checking whether your business is ready. This helps you spot gaps, understand where to focus first and avoid common pitfalls that can slow adoption.

Be clear about the problem you want to address, the outcomes you’re aiming for, and how AI could help. This keeps decisions focused on your business needs and reduces the risk of investing in tools that don’t deliver value.

Clear direction helps you avoid spreading effort across too many initiatives. It ensures how you use AI is connected to productivity, growth and outcomes.

Check you’re ready:

• Do we understand the problem we want AI to help solve?
• Is there a clear connection to business goals and values?
• Have we defined what success will look like?

Learn how to measure return on investment and identify opportunities.

Successful AI adoption is driven by people and team culture, not only technology. 

Before you introduce AI, you need to understand the potential impact on your people, customers and other stakeholders.

Engaging your people helps identify where AI could deliver value or create risk. Employers have obligations to consult under workplace and workplace health and safety laws.

People need to be ready and supported to use AI well. This means building practical skills, setting clear expectations, and helping people understand how AI fits into their day-to-day work. Meaningful consultation with workers is the best way to achieve this.

Training and change management are key to building trust and confidence. So is ensuring people have a say and remain in control of technology and key decisions.

Check you’re ready:

• Do we have people with the capability to use and oversee AI tools?  
• Have workers been meaningfully consulted?
• Is all AI use transparent?
• What training do teams need? 
• Do teams understand how AI supports their work, and where their judgement is still important? 
• What impacts will AI have on staff, customers or the community?
• Do teams know how to identify and raise impacts and risks? 
• Do we have access to external skills and resources?

Learn how to understand AI impacts and support your people.

Using AI safely and responsibly requires clear oversight, accountability and controls. Good governance processes are essential to protect people, data and business reputation. 

This includes being clear about who’s accountable for the AI and processes to manage risks. It also includes being clear when using AI.

Check you’re ready:

• Do we know our obligations?
• Do we know who is responsible for decisions about AI use?
• Do we understand which AI uses need greater scrutiny or approval?

Learn about the essential AI practices and use AI screening questions.

AI relies on data to deliver useful and reliable results. This includes understanding whether your data is accurate, accessible and appropriate for the purpose, as well as how it’s managed and protected. This is an important foundation to meet privacy, intellectual property and cybersecurity obligations.

Good data practices improve the performance and reliability of AI solutions you adopt. It helps manage risks and enables you to scale AI use with confidence.

Check you’re ready: 

• Do we have access to the data we need?
• Is our data accurate and relevant?
• Do we fully understand our responsibilities our privacy, intellectual property and cybersecurity obligations?
• What ongoing data management will we need?

Learn how to strengthen data quality and improve your data security.

AI often changes how activities are performed, not just the tools people use. Reviewing end-to-end workflows helps identify where AI can reduce manual effort, improve efficiency or support clearer decisions. Meaningful consultation with workers can ensure this is done in the best possible way.

Process redesign is often where AI can deliver the most meaningful productivity and value gains.

Check you’re ready:

• Can existing workflows adapt to include AI?
• Have workers been meaningfully consulted?
• Are our processes to identify and manage risk, and use AI responsibly?  
• Will roles or responsibilities need to change?
• Are teams open to adjusting processes based on what they learn?

Learn how to map your processes and align your AI use to the 6 essential practices?