Basics of AI for Business : Practical, Safe, Immediately Useful
A practical, human-first introduction to AI for businesses. Learn what AI can do reliably, where it can go wrong, and how to use it safely for everyday tasks like writing, summarising, planning, customer responses, and basic workflow automation.
Description
AI is already showing up in the tools you use but most teams don’t have a consistent, safe way to use it. This workshop cuts through the noise and gives you clear, practical foundations for using AI at work responsibly.
You’ll learn the basics in plain English, see real business examples, and practise a simple method to apply AI to your own workflows. We’ll also cover essential guardrails: privacy, sensitive information, accuracy checking, and how to keep humans in control.
You’ll leave with reusable prompts, a safe-use checklist, and a simple 30-day pilot plan so AI becomes a helpful habit not a risky experiment.
Course Topics
- AI in plain English: what it is (and what it isn’t)
- Where AI helps most in business: quick wins and high-impact use-cases
- Prompting (talking correctly with AI) that works: getting useful output without “prompt engineer” complexity
- Summarising documents, meetings, and notes (without losing meaning)
- Drafting emails, proposals, policies, and customer responses in your brand voice
- Basic “AI quality control”: accuracy checks, bias checks, and safe assumptions
- Privacy & sensitive information: what not to share and safer ways to work
- Workflow mapping: where AI fits and where humans must stay involved
- Identifying automation candidates (low-risk, high-return tasks)
- Pilot planning: choosing one safe experiment and measuring results
How Will This Course Help You
- Save time on repetitive writing and admin tasks
- Improve consistency and quality in customer and internal communication
- Reduce risk by learning practical privacy and accuracy guardrails
- Build confidence to trial AI without confusion or overwhelm
- Create a realistic plan to introduce AI with your team (not just as a personal tool)
- How to make a company's context document
Objectives
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Explain AI clearly to colleagues and stakeholders
- Apply AI to at least 3–5 real workplace tasks with a repeatable method
- Write prompts that produce clearer, more accurate outputs
- Identify tasks suitable for AI support vs tasks that must remain human-led
- Use a simple checklist to reduce errors, hallucinations, and “overconfidence” in outputs
- Set basic team guardrails for safe, responsible AI use
- Company's context document
Prerequisites
- No technical background required
- Bring a laptop (recommended)
- Bring one real work task you’d like to improve (e.g., email templates, reporting, customer FAQs, planning docs)
Who Can Enrol
- Small business owners and operators
- Managers and team leaders
- Admin/operations teams
- Marketing, sales, and customer service staff
- HR/people & culture professionals
- Educators and community organisations (where relevant)
- Anyone new to AI who wants practical, safe foundations
Why this Program Stands Out
- Human-first: focuses on augmentation, not replacement
- Freebies: Context document framework, complete presentation and chance to win a free AI assessment for your company with AI by PSG
- Practical: built around real workflows and repeatable methods
- Responsible by design: privacy, trust, and quality control included (not tacked on)
- Australia-relevant: examples and risks aligned to local expectations and workplaces
- Take-home assets: prompts, checklists, templates, and a pilot plan you can actually use
- Interactive: not a lecture participants build something during the session
Why You Should Enrol
If you’ve been curious about AI but unsure where to start or worried about risk, accuracy, and privacy this workshop gives you the essentials in a clear, hands-on way. You’ll leave knowing what to use, what to avoid, and how to implement AI safely so it genuinely helps your business (and your people) from day one.