The Financial Times has continued to build on its award-winning data literacy work and, in 2025, showed the DataIQ judging panel that it has gone further still. Its AI Fluency Initiative has given employees not just access to new tools, but the confidence and responsibility to use AI effectively and ethically. For this achievement, the FT has been named the winner of Best AI Literacy Initiative at the 2025 DataIQ Awards.
This award recognises organisations that embed AI literacy across the business – moving beyond the data team to ensure employees can adopt, question, and apply AI responsibly. The FT has demonstrated exactly that: a shift from isolated experimentation to a culture where AI is integrated into daily work, with governance and fluency built in from the start.
“This is not just a one off. It feels like a real support ecosystem is being setup for AI literacy.” – Judges’ comments
The AI Fluency Initiative
Launched in January 2024, the AI Fluency Initiative set an ambitious target: build confidence and capability with AI across a global workforce of more than 3,000. The strategy was clear – education, engagement, and adoption – backed by leadership sponsorship and designed to address the very real barriers of time, trust, and usability.
The programme introduced AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini, structured workshops, and a new AI Fluency Framework to benchmark progress. Highlights included:
- AI Immersion Week – a global event with leadership panels, expert sessions, and peer showcases, drawing 1,214 unique attendees and sustaining 1,000+ weekly active ChatGPT users afterwards.
- Competitions and community engagement – from an AI mascot design contest with 84 submissions and over 1,200 votes to active knowledge-sharing forums.
- Training resources – monthly workshops on prompt engineering and ethics, function-specific sessions for teams, and on-demand learning modules accessible to all.
By late 2024, AI adoption had scaled rapidly: more than 1,400 weekly active users (50% of the workforce), 569 employees completing the AI Fluency Quiz, and 98% achieving “AI literate” status – up from 88% earlier in the year.
Embedding a Responsible AI Culture
The judges noted that what set the FT apart was not just uptake of tools, but the deliberate effort to embed responsible use. Employee sentiment scores rose from 6.4 to 7.1 over the course of the programme, while 78% of attendees rated sessions five stars. Feedback was emphatic: employees reported gains in productivity, efficiency, and confidence in applying AI to real business challenges.
The programme was also carefully structured with clear roles: communications strategy to sustain awareness, technical oversight to track usage, learning design for workshops, and executive sponsorship to reinforce importance. This cross-functional model ensured AI was not treated as a technology project but a business capability.
Looking Ahead
For the FT, AI fluency is not a one-off campaign but a foundation for the future. The organisation has created the structures – from frameworks to communities – that ensure employees remain equipped to adapt as AI evolves. The judges agreed that the FT has set a benchmark: proving that with the right balance of leadership, structure, and creativity, AI literacy can be scaled responsibly across a global workforce.
