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Airtel Payments Bank is betting that AI readiness is a workforce design problem, not a training calendar problem. Shruti Thakral, the bank’s HR leader, describes a multi-layered skilling approach that segments AI learning by function, with Risk and InfoSec teams trained on AI governance while HR teams focus on productivity. The model relies on internal “change agents” to drive adoption, supplemented by hackathons and external platform partnerships, with learning agility embedded directly into performance criteria.
What this means for your business
The detail worth pausing on here isn’t the hackathons or the vendor partnerships. It’s the performance criteria move. Embedding adaptability and learning agility as explicit KPIs, rather than nice-to-have cultural values, reframes AI skilling as something the performance management system enforces rather than something L&D hopes for. If your organization is still treating AI literacy as a voluntary enrichment program, you’re not building the same thing Airtel Payments Bank claims to be building. The question isn’t whether you have training. It’s whether the people who skip it face any consequences.
The function-segmented skilling model is worth examining closely. The instinct at most enterprises is to run a single AI literacy program across the whole company, which produces broad but shallow coverage. Splitting the curriculum by function, so that compliance and risk teams learn governance frameworks while operations teams learn productivity applications, costs more to design and maintain but produces people who can actually use the tools in context. The tradeoff is real: standardized programs scale cheaply, but contextual programs change behavior. CHROs who haven’t made that choice explicitly are defaulting to the cheaper option by accident.
The “change agent” model, where internal employees are identified and developed as adoption champions rather than relying entirely on top-down mandates or external trainers, is the piece most likely to determine whether any of this holds. It’s also the piece most likely to be underfunded. Change agents work when they have dedicated time, visible sponsorship, and some authority to push back on teams that aren’t engaging. They fail when they’re volunteers doing it alongside a full job. The leading indicator to watch in your own organization isn’t the number of employees who completed a module. It’s whether your designated change agents have protected capacity or just a new title.
Based on reporting from Beyond Ready-Made Roles: Shruti Thakral’s strategy for a workforce that thrives on uncertainty, originally published 2026-07-22 08:10:00.
