01 · ChallengeThe energy was there. The next step was giving everyone the same foundation.
Virgin Red is the Virgin Group's loyalty and rewards business: fast-moving, entrepreneurial and fiercely brand-led. The team was already exploring AI, and the energy was real. The opportunity was to turn that early momentum into something the whole business shared.
Virgin Red first brought in AI Accelerator in mid-2025 for a State of AI review, which set the priorities for what came next.
Virgin Red set out the goal when it launched the programme: "We are investing in our people so everyone can use AI confidently and safely, regardless of role or technical background." As a purpose-driven organisation, it wanted to move quickly with AI and to use it responsibly and ethically, starting with a shared foundation of AI literacy across the whole business.
02 · ApproachLeadership went first, and every layer built on the last.
Virgin Red called the programme AI Enablement, and its leaders went first. In early 2026, before anything reached the wider business, the executive team took the AI Primer themselves, and AI Accelerator met each of them one to one. Those conversations became a shared set of principles and a clear position on AI, including where human judgement stays in charge, which the leadership team welcomed and used to shape how it talked about AI across the business. The commitment was visible from the top before anyone else was asked to make it.
The conversation then opened up to everyone. At Virgin's all-staff Vision Day in January, AI Accelerator's founder, Mike Chatterton, joined Virgin's leadership on stage for two panel sessions, taking colleagues' questions on AI and the years ahead.
Then the whole business took the AI Primer, delivered by AI Accelerator across 28 sessions in eleven weeks. It taught how AI actually works rather than which buttons to press, so the skills would hold as the tools change.
From the first session, Virgin Red's own principles for using AI responsibly went to every colleague. AI Accelerator scripted the explainer video and built the principles into every AI Primer, the first champions session and the AI Hub.
On that foundation came tool-specific training. AI Accelerator practitioners who use ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude every day ran hands-on sessions and webinars, taking people from first steps to confident, regular use.
Short, use-case-specific five-minute nudges came next, showing people how to apply AI to the real work in front of them.
Everything lived in one place. Session recordings, guides and the five-minute nudges sat on Virgin Red's own AI Hub on the company intranet, organised into tools, use cases, techniques and knowledge, so people could come back to them whenever they needed.
Alongside all of it, Virgin Red built a champions network, designed with AI Accelerator. The first cohort received specialist training so that help sits inside the teams, close to the work.
03 · OutcomeThe team rated it, used it, and kept coming back.
The first verdict came from the team itself: nearly all rated the AI Primer good or above.
Ratings matter less than what people do next. Most had already applied something new, and others planned to. Together, that was the vast majority. And every colleague who took the AI Primer had worked through Virgin Red's own principles for using AI responsibly, so the confidence came with a shared sense of where the lines are.
And it lasted. Week after week, the webinars drew around a quarter of all colleagues, with no requirement to attend. Sustained, voluntary attendance like that is what a learning habit looks like, and it held because the content stayed relevant to the real work in front of people.
“The training was engaging, practical and made complex ideas easy to understand.”
04Key takeaways
- Start at the top. When leaders take the training first, the ask to everyone else becomes credible. Virgin Red's executive team went through the AI Primer before anyone else did.
- Teach how AI works, not which buttons to press. Tools change. Understanding transfers. Build that first, then layer tool training on top.
- Capability is a habit, not an event. One session sparks interest. Short, regular sessions that people choose to attend are what make it stick.
- Teach responsible use, not just how to use it. Knowing how to use AI is only half of it. Virgin Red's own principles for using AI responsibly and ethically were part of every AI Primer from the first session.