USA 
United KingdomMary Alice Vuicic
CPO, Thomson Reuters
“Move past hesitation and anxiety to facts and curiosity,” Mary Alice Vuicic, CPO at Thomson Reuters tells HR Grapevine...
Mary Alice Vuicic
CPO, Thomson Reuters
“Move past hesitation and anxiety to facts and curiosity,” Mary Alice Vuicic, CPO at Thomson Reuters tells HR Grapevine...
“If you don’t adopt it, you will be left behind.”
Mary Alice Vuicic, Chief People Officer at Thomson Reuters says her business couldn’t be clearer with its employees about the need to develop artificial intelligence (AI) skills.
Like most businesses in the past two years, the information services behemoth has issued a strong ultimatum to staff about the importance of getting comfortable with the technology that (depending on who you ask) is causing a revolution, tsunami, or apocalypse within the world of work.
Unlike most, however, Thomson Reuters has already achieved substantial AI adoption across its workforce. Over 11,000 employees of its 26,000-strong global workforce have completed the company’s ‘AI Foundations’ course to date. Moreover, 48% used generative AI tools in August 2024 alone (up from a 37% average in Q2).
Speaking exclusively to HR Grapevine, Vuicic brings us up to speed with the journey so far – from hackathons and executive mandates to governance frameworks and test environments – and reveals how the company has supported its employees through the firm mandate for change.
How is Thomson Reuters helping employees learn about AI?
To start, Vuicic says, we must go back three decades: “This is not new to us," she begins.
Having embedded AI and machine learning into its core business for three decades, Thomson Reuters can boast more history than most in the journey of AI adoption.
That depth of experience has served the company extremely well since enterprise-grade generative AI exploded into our lives two years ago. Recognizing the need for an immediate shift in investment strategy, product roadmap, and colleague capabilities to boot, the business committed to training and reskilling its 26,000 employees.
Vuicic says the company understands the all-in commitment to AI adoption was – and is – daunting to many. According to Thomson Reuters’ latest Future of Professionals report, while 44% of professionals are excited about generative AI entering their industry, more than one third remain hesitant.
So, at the beginning of 2023, when the generative AI boom was raw, nascent, and anxiety-inducing for many – specifically, on the company’s first Global Learning Day in April, an event that brought together employees from across the business – Thomson Reuters’ executive team was careful to leave no doubt about its upcoming priorities.
“The first goal was AI for customers, but the second goal adopted at that time was AI for colleagues. The two are equally critical in our mind, and we communicated that to employees on the first global learning day," Vuicic recalls.
At the event, President and CEO of Thomson Reuters Steve Hasker told employees the company was entering a new era, and that it would be critical for each employee to develop AI skills.
His message was followed up by eight hours of AI training for 6,000 employees and the launch of Open Arena, an internal playground to which each employee was given access—think less roundabouts and swings, and more large language model (LLM)-enabled generative AI tools (four, to be exact.) Proof, if it was needed, that Thomson Reuters is serious about its commitment to AI capability development.
The company subsequently introduced a sprawling range of AI courses and development programmes. As of November 2024, more than 11,000 employees have taken Thomson Reuters’ AI Foundations course.
Together with Kirsty Roth, Chief Technology Officer at Thomson Reuters, Vuicic has also created an AI champions network made of 400 individuals – “early adopters and super users of the technology” – across all functions and seniorities.
Champions are expected to actively promote AI use each day and share best practices, use cases, tips, and tools with their teammates. The network was invited to do so on the second Global Learning Day later in 2023.
Thomson Reuters also selected ‘integrators,’ who demonstrate how the technology can be embedded into processes, and ‘reskillers,’ who work on improving the capabilities of employees in the roles where AI-enabled time savings are the most prominent.
‘The Four T’s’ – A cultural shift underpinning Thomson Reuter’s AI transformation
To drive such a significant shift in a company’s investment strategy and product roadmap, culture change is always a necessary bridge to cross.
Putting AI development programmes together is one thing, but encouraging adoption, engagement, and training completion is another. “You can spend all the time in the world designing these different courses and different schemes, but you have to see buy-in from the top,” Vuicic notes.
In the spirit of leading a horse to water and then making it drink, Vuicic and her team have attempted to shift Thomson Reuters’ culture using a framework Vuicic calls ‘The Four T’s’: Tone from the top, training for people, tools to get hands-on experience, and time to experiment. The model has helped bring the business and employees together and the journey towards enterprise AI adoption.
“Our goal was to move away from all the headlines at the time which said millions of people were going to lose their jobs, and all sorts of other negative things are going to happen,” Vuicic says. “We wanted to move past hesitation and anxiety to facts and curiosity.”
When people get the tools, the training, and the time to experiment, Vuicic says, they are “delighted” by what they can learn. “AI takes away the ‘no-joy’ work and gives them time to focus on the things that they like to do more and that take more intellectual horsepower.”
Employee concerns: Ethical AI usage and job displacement
Reflecting on the company’s commitment to the ethical use of AI – which ranks among the top concerns for employees – Vuicic again recalls the company’s three-decade history with the technology, clarifying it has built “well-established AI governance.”
The CPO added ethical guidelines have been “updated with the advent of generative consumer-grade generative AI” and are “embedded” into Thomson Reuters’ code of conduct.
“We built this into the [foundation] training and it's also embedded in Open Arena… and have strong guidelines about not using LLMs outside of work for work purposes,” she explains. “If you don't give access to them safe and secure access, they will use it outside of work, and companies do not want that.”
Job displacement is the other major concern reported by employees across countless surveys, and, as noted, Thomson Reuters’ executive team has been bullish with its employees about the need for them to upskill in AI.
“We’ve said to our people, you will be left behind. We’re giving you every opportunity to use this… so if you don’t adopt it in your day-to-day and use the tools, there won’t be a place for you in the future,” Vuicic says.
But when asked about the possible impact this tough stance could have on employees, the executive says the company has repeated the message “AI does not replace jobs. AI replaces tasks.”
When AI frees up time previously taken up by manual tasks, the company reinvests the resource into other areas including product roadmap innovation.
“AI will be able to do some tasks better than humans,” Vuicic continues. “We have to look at the remaining tasks and redesign work around those remaining tasks—the new and elevated tasks that we now have the time and the capacity to do.”
Overcoming resistance through “human-centered” AI adoption
There have been bumps in the road. For all the change management criteria ticked off with the creation of the Open Arena, the Four T’s, and the AI Champions Network, some employees have understandably remained hesitant. This, asserts Vuicic, is why “human-centered adoption” is so important.
“We focus on upskilling people to use AI and ideally, we're able to plan ahead for shifts in terms of what tasks are going to be replaced and how roles are going to evolve,” she says.
Early in 2023, for example, the company saw a sluggish uptake in AI technology from its engineering department—a team that has historically been quick to adopt emerging technologies.
To address the hesitant adoption, Thomson Reuters put together a hackathon for 400 product engineers, during which the participants were told to use an AI tool to code their way through day-to-day business problems. Hands-on use of AI increased significantly as a result.
“We had to get them doing hands-on experimentation to experience what it does in their day-to-day work,” Vuicic explains. “That's one of the reasons why we set up an enterprise AI adoption strategy led by talent and technology together.”
The CPO says HR “has to lead the way” in helping organizations with the responsible adoption of AI, but also in the social and economic comparative upskilling of the workforce for the future. “You can't have a situation where the rate of change is faster than the rate that the organization is evolving or the talent is evolving,” she reflects.
AI commitment crucial to engagement, Thomson Reuters’ CPO says
Accordingly, with such an intense pace of change, Vuicic recognizes there has been a lot for Thomson Reuters’ workforce to digest in the past 24 months. But recent engagement surveys indicate that the AI upskilling journey has been a boost of energy for the company.
“We just shared our organizational health index (OHI) results for 2024. We’re at record highs across the board,” Vuicic shares. “People want their organizations to help, they want to see that their organizations are navigating the AI era, and they want to know that the organization is helping them build skills to stay relevant.”
She points to the Future of Professionals report, which found that companies seen as AI ‘leaders’ are poised to win the war for talent. When AI advocates perceive their organization to be an AI leader, 71% are highly engaged, dropping to just 33% when the organization is seen as an AI follower.
“We see this with our own people. If the company isn’t at the forefront of it [AI adoption], the company won’t succeed; and if the company isn’t allowing them to build skills for the future, they won’t succeed.”
Thomson Reuters' commitment to supporting employees through this journey, then, remains just as strong as the upskilling ultimatum itself.
“We’re not shying away. When we don't have the answers or when we've made mistakes, we just keep reinforcing that we're all learning," Vuicic concludes. "The greatest engagement driver is that people see we’re investing in their future by giving them the tools, time, and training to do the job."
