AI Transformation
Action Guide

The Urgent Need for Change Management in AI Integration

The artificial intelligence (AI) transformation isn’t coming to American workplaces; it has already arrived. But unlike previous technological shifts that began with institutional adoption and formal training, this change started in the gaps. Employees experiment with ChatGPT without official guidance, managers apply AI tools to speed up tasks without a clear strategy, and organizations race to adopt technology before defining what problems they’re trying to solve, to name a few examples. Education and training providers face an organizational readiness problem, often lacking the infrastructure, communication strategies, and feedback loops to support and sustain AI integration.

For education and training providers, this creates an unprecedented opportunity. Rather than playing catch-up to workplace demands, you can step into a leadership role by helping employers implement AI strategically. You can prepare learners to use, evaluate, and adapt tools and ensure that this technological shift serves human development rather than simply replacing it. But doing so will take more than launching a new credential or buying new software. The organizations best positioned to navigate this rapid transformation—for themselves, their teams, and the learners and workers they serve—are taking a truly holistic approach to AI. They are comprehensively evaluating how it’s reshaping the future of learning and work and shepherding their institutions through a change management strategy that’s as much cultural as it is technological.

Since before the generative AI explosion in fall 2022, Jobs for the Future (JFF) has been exploring the implications of artificial intelligence for economic opportunity and the work and learning ecosystem. JFF’s Center for Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Work has conducted in-depth research examining how innovative community colleges and training providers across the United States are responding to AI. It has identified barriers and opportunities for integrating AI literacy and durable skills training into existing pathways, mapping AI adoption capacity and maturity in local adult learning ecosystems, and collaborating with a state community college network to catalyze change at the system level.

In 2025, this research transitioned into applied learning. This JFF action guide emerges from the experiences of institutions and organizations that made the deliberate choice to lead in AI integration. Miami Dade College, Ivy Tech Community College, Charter Oak State College, Laney College, and Georgia Technical College System, along with workforce training providers Per Scholas, Merit America, Climb Hire, The Los Angeles Economic Equity Accelerator & Fellowship (LEAFF), and Year Up United, joined JFF’s AI Pioneers Lab to tackle a defining question: How are education and training organizations on the leading edge of AI transformation infusing the skills needed for an AI-integrated world into their curriculum, programming, and operations? What have they tested, learned, and integrated into their strategies going forward—and where is the rubber of best practice meeting the road of dayin, day-out technological and institutional change? During more than six months of intensive collaboration, these early movers shared what they learned about leading their organizations through AI-driven disruption.