AI Enablement for Small Business Teams
General-purpose AI assistants put to work on the routine office tasks that fill a small team’s week.
- Instructional hours
- 10
- Schedule
- 5 sessions of 2 hours, one per week
- Price
- $3,000 per trainee
- Cohort size
- Up to 8
- Format
- Live over video; hybrid on request
- Delivery
- 100% live and instructor-led, during paid work hours
What
Learning objectives
- 01Explain what an AI assistant can and cannot do reliably.
- 02Write structured instructions that produce consistent results.
- 03Verify AI output against source data with a repeatable spot-check.
- 04Use an assistant with files, email and calendar data inside company-controlled accounts.
- 05Build, test and document one repeatable workflow.
- 06Apply data-handling rules for what may and may not be shared with an AI tool.
Who
Who it is for
Office managers, bookkeepers and accounting staff, operations and dispatch coordinators, and sales and customer-service staff at companies of 2–100 employees in any industry.
No technical background required.
For Express-funded seats, all participants must be W-2 employees of the company receiving grant funds, including owner-operators.
Why
Why it matters
Staff at small companies spend part of every week re-typing, re-formatting and re-checking information that these tools can now handle, and the same tools used carelessly create privacy and accuracy problems. Employees who can direct the tools and check their work reclaim that time and reduce errors.
How
How it is taught
5 sessions of 2 hours, one per week, live with an instructor: interactive lecture, guided demonstration and hands-on practice. All practice uses the course's standardized practice material: A fictional small business with sample documents, spreadsheets, a mailbox and a calendar, identical for every participant.
Capstone
In session 5 each participant builds one workflow from the practice company’s case set, such as turning a batch of sample vendor invoices into a reconciled spreadsheet summary, or producing a weekly status report from the sample mailbox and calendar.
The instructor reviews each capstone live against a written rubric:
- The workflow gives correct output on a second, unseen practice file.
- The participant’s check catches an error planted in that file.
- The written procedure lets another participant run it.
- No restricted data is used.
Each participant receives written feedback against the rubric.
Session by session
Hour-by-hour outline
10 instructional hours. Every hour is live with the instructor, and every exercise uses the course's standardized practice material.
| Session | Time | Content | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hour 1 | How AI assistants work, what they do reliably and where they fail; course data-handling rules. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 1 | Hour 2 | First structured instruction on the practice company’s documents; choosing tasks that fit. | Hands-on practice |
| 2 | Hour 1 | Instructions that hold up: role, inputs, output format, checks; reusable templates. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 2 | Hour 2 | Drafting, summarizing and extracting data from the practice company’s standardized documents. | Hands-on practice |
| 3 | Hour 1 | Spreadsheet work: cleaning, comparing and reconciling data; the spot-check verification method. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 3 | Hour 2 | Reconciling two practice datasets and producing a recurring report; verifying output against source. | Hands-on practice |
| 4 | Hour 1 | Working with files, email and calendar inside company-controlled accounts; what may not be shared. | Lecture and demonstration |
| 4 | Hour 2 | An assistant working in the practice company’s sample mailbox and calendar; documenting a procedure. | Hands-on practice |
| 5 | Hour 1 | Capstone build: each participant builds and tests one workflow from the practice case set. | Hands-on, instructor circulating |
| 5 | Hour 2 | Capstone review: run on an unseen practice file, planted-error check, peer run of the written procedure; written feedback. | Instructor review against the rubric |
Paying for it
Express reimbursement, once approved.
This course is not yet approved, so employers cannot apply for it yet. Once it is, an employer with 100 or fewer Massachusetts employees can apply to the Express program for 100% of the course cost, up to $3,000 per employee. The employer applies at least 21 days before the first session, with a Department of Revenue Certificate of Good Standing, a Department of Unemployment Assistance Certificate of Compliance and a W-9. Program questions go to express@commcorp.org. Our help with the application is free.
Support Forge LLC is a registered training provider with the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund Express program. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Commonwealth Corporation or the Workforce Training Fund. Program terms are set by Commonwealth Corporation (commcorp.org/express) and govern over anything on this page.