Experience alone used to be enough. Learn your craft. Do the work. Repeat.
That world doesn’t exist anymore. Today, standing still isn’t neutral – it’s falling behind.
Artificial intelligence makes that reality impossible to ignore. AI is already reshaping how we write, analyze, plan and make decisions. Tasks that once took hours now take minutes. Insights that required days of manual effort can surface instantly. Entire workflows are being reimagined.
We’re embedding AI across our business – from strengthening our R&D engine and automating manufacturing to improving customer service and modernizing marketing – but technology alone doesn’t create advantage. People who know how to use it do.
This isn’t some distant future. It’s happening right now, inside every industry. And the gap between people who use AI and people who don’t is widening every day.
The risk isn’t that AI replaces people. It’s that people who don’t use AI get replaced by people who do.
At Bausch + Lomb, we decided early that we didn’t want our teams watching this shift from the sidelines. We want them leading it. So we partnered with Coursera to launch the Bausch + Lomb AI Academy, offering foundational generative AI courses to roughly 8,000 knowledge workers across our company.
The results were immediate. Teams began automating reports, accelerating research, drafting communications faster and freeing up time to focus on customers and patients instead of repetitive tasks. Small efficiency gains compounded into meaningful impact.
But we also saw hesitation.
Some people felt AI wasn’t relevant to their role. Others believed they were too early in their career – or too far along – to need it, or assumed it wouldn’t make much difference. That mindset is understandable, as change rarely feels urgent until suddenly it is. But when technology evolves this quickly, opting out isn’t staying where you are. It’s moving backward.
That’s why we made a clear decision: foundational AI learning is now mandatory. If employees don’t complete it, they’re not eligible for their bonus.
And we didn’t stop at completion. We’re asking employees to show how they’re applying what they learn by sharing real examples of how AI helps solve day-to-day challenges, improve workflows or create better outcomes for customers and patients.
This isn’t about checking a box. It’s about changing how work gets done.
AI literacy is now a core business skill, just like financial acumen or customer focus. And we’re expanding the Academy so employees can go as deep as they want, applying those capabilities directly to their everyday work.
Our goal isn’t to create AI experts. It’s to create AI-enabled professionals. Because the future won’t belong to the people who know the most – it will belong to the people who learn the fastest.
What’s been most encouraging is who’s leaning in. Some of the most powerful use cases are coming from experienced professionals who combine decades of expertise with new AI tools. That combination isn’t redundancy – it’s advantage.
For leaders, this means modeling curiosity. We can’t delegate learning.
For employees, it means treating AI like a career investment, not a compliance exercise. As I’ve stressed in global town hall meetings, start small. Automate one task. Experiment with one tool. Save one hour. Those gains add up quickly.
AI will keep evolving, and none of us will ever feel completely caught up. But staying ahead isn’t about mastering everything – it’s about refusing to stand still.
In the age of AI, standing still isn’t safe. It’s the fastest way to become irrelevant.
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
