Before any organisation can have a robust AI strategy, it must first establish a winning People strategy. At Multiverse, we believe the best AI experts aren't always found—they're built.
As other People leaders scramble to compete for a scarce pool of highly skilled external AI talent, we have fundamentally shifted our approach to talent development to focus on building our own AI-ready workforce internally.
The shift: Hiring for AI will, not just skill
We recently launched a new hiring framework that focuses on assessing a candidate’s interest in AI. Why? Because we don't want to miss out on brilliant talent just because they haven't had the opportunity to engage with AI tools in their previous roles.
Our framework assesses candidates’ current level of AI competence through a series of questions and tasks built into our hiring process, matching them to one of four levels of AI maturity. The only group we exclude from hiring are those who demonstrate no will towards learning about AI. Everyone else, we’re confident we can equip with the necessary skills to fully adopt AI.
Bespoke onboarding: Building AI skills
This commitment to developing talent continues the moment a new hire joins. We have committed to our employees that they will become the most AI-powered versions of their profession.
Based on their assessed AI maturity, new hires are placed into a custom onboarding programme, receiving more than 20 hours of training in their first three months.
Demonstrable ROI: Quantifying the impact
Our internal upskilling isn’t just a feel-good initiative: it delivers measurable business impact. Last year, we grew our revenue per employee by 37% through strategic investments in AI and a cultural transformation to enable it.
We track several key outcomes, starting with tool usage. We’ve been able to demonstrate that those who engage with our AI upskilling programmes use our AI tools much more frequently than those who don't: for example, they log 73% more Gemini interactions.
We also look for impact stories, quantifying the results of the training, such as the reduced number of hours spent on certain activities or specific cost savings. Across our departments, we’ve logged more than 220 AI use cases created, representing how our team has reimagined their workflows to be more efficient and effective.
If you are a People leader looking to future-proof your organisation, the answer isn't a complex, expensive external hiring spree. The answer is empowering every member of your team with the skills and confidence to excel in the AI-driven future, right now.
