The industry determines what a company has to deal with. But even within the same organisation, every department uses AI differently. The question that preoccupies the marketing manager never occurs to the accountant, and vice versa. A training course aimed at everyone therefore almost inevitably misses what most people actually need.
One company, many AI worlds
Even within a single medium-sized company, people with completely different points of contact with AI sit side by side. What is the central issue for one role simply does not arise in another. A training course that tells everyone the same thing therefore fails to address the issues relevant to most people.
Let’s look at just how different the issues actually are.
Just how different the questions really are
- Personnel and HR. Job applications, employee data and job advertisements. AI systems used to evaluate or shortlist applications may be classified as high-risk. What matters is the system’s intended purpose and what it actually does.
- Marketing. AI-generated text and images are part of everyday work. One important question is disclosure: specific transparency obligations apply to deepfakes and certain AI-generated texts intended to inform the public. Which obligation applies depends on the content and its use. Applicant data is usually less central here, but can play a role in recruitment marketing.
- Sales. Quotes, customer emails, data from the CRM. The key question is: which customer data can be used in which tool – and which is best avoided?
- Accounting and finance. Figures, contracts and confidential business data. Confidentiality is a central concern; image labelling plays a smaller part in typical day-to-day work.
- Customer service. Chatbots and draft responses. People should generally be told when they are interacting with an AI chatbot, unless this is already obvious. Transparency in direct customer contact is the central concern.
- IT. Manages tools, access and security. Its questions concern both technology and content: what may a tool process, how are outputs checked and who can access what?
- management. Uses AI for research, initial drafts and strategic work – often with the most confidential documents in the entire organisation.
Seven roles, seven priorities. What is central to one is not even a peripheral issue for another.
Why ‘a bit of everything for everyone’ helps no one
Generic training tries to cover every topic for everyone. People end up overloaded with irrelevant information while their real questions get lost. The accountant needs different priorities from the marketing colleague. Shared foundations remain important. But giving every role every detail can make it harder to focus on what each person needs in practice.
Department-specific training is therefore the opposite of information overload: everyone learns what actually happens in their own day-to-day work – concise, relevant, practical. This saves time and, at the same time, ensures that what has been learnt actually sticks, because it is linked to real tasks.
The role changes – the person remains
One point is particularly important to me here, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises: there, one person often wears several hats. The administrative assistant does the bookkeeping and Customer Service. The Managing Director takes care of Marketing on the side. The sales representative steps in to help with support.
A department-specific approach must therefore not mean pigeonholing someone. It means: everyone receives exactly the building blocks that match their actual tasks – including several, if someone fulfils multiple roles. It is not the job title that matters, but what the person actually does.
Industry and department together ensure precision
This brings us full circle to the industry. The industry determines what the company fundamentally deals with; the department determines what the individual does on a day-to-day basis. Only when both are right – the ‘what’ of the company and the ‘how’ of the role – does compulsory training become something that sticks in the mind and helps at the right moment.
Generic training is quickly completed. Targeted training is effective – because it meets each person exactly where they actually are.
That is why employees using the EU AI Act Academy are assigned modules that match their actual tasks, including several where someone has more than one role. Everyone learns what their daily work requires, rather than what is irrelevant to it.