00:00  WPP's AI Transformation Journey

‍Lisette Danesi: Hello, everyone. I'm Lisette Danesi, and I lead the corporate people function at WPP. For those less familiar with us, WPP is a global creative transformation company. We work across marketing, advertising, communications, and consulting. We're home to 108,000 people around the globe in more than 110 countries, all connected through our London headquarters. 

Now, it's fair to say AI has moved from buzzword to boardroom priority. At WPP, it's reshaping the way we work, the way we think, and, yes, the way we lead. We know the business case for AI is compelling. It can drive efficiency, creativity, performance, but the real challenge is human. How do we engage our people in this transformation, especially at scale? Because without employee adoption, even the smartest tech won't deliver the results. 

00:59  Empowering Employees with AI

Lisette: At WPP, we're not just using AI. We're building it. We've developed our own proprietary platform, WPP Open, which powers how we create content and ideas for our clients with greater speed and insight. We also work with the big tech firms to extend our capabilities even further. But one thing has been true from the start: AI only works if our people are on board. And people don't come on board because of the dashboard. They come on board because they feel safe, supported, and seen. That's why we focus not just on the tools, but on the employee experience surrounding them. And that's where our partnership with Nadia has really come into its own. 

01:41  3 Steps For Piloting Nadia: Listen, Learn, Iterate

We started by listening, because we knew we couldn't make assumptions. And what we heard was clear. Access to support and coaching wasn't consistent, especially in our service centers and at the junior level roles. Employees wanted help navigating ongoing change, restructures, new leadership, new tools. And they wanted clarity. How do my goals connect with the bigger picture? How do I stay focused and resilient in my day? 

We also agreed upfront we wouldn't get everything right the first time. So we built our approach around three principles: listen, learn, iterate. We began our pilot involving 400 colleagues around the world across our Global People team and our Malaysia-based delivery service center. Malaysia was an intentional choice for us. It's operationally vital and culturally diverse, so it was a really strong test case for scale and localization. 

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive: 95 net promoter score, 82% engagement, and a strong uptake across all levels and all functions. So people describe Nadia as supportive, as relevant, and something that they wanted to keep using. They were surprised it was that good. That early trust gave us the confidence to keep moving forward. 

From there, we expanded and rolled out Nadia to all our global HQ people. We prioritized teams going through large-scale change, like our enterprise technology function, where new managers really would benefit from the coaching and the support to lead through the complexity of what was happening in the business. We also worked closely with regional leaders to tailor Nadia for local context: not just language, but tone, mindset, and behavioral norms so it would show up relevant to people where they are. Colleagues across functions up to C-suite are using it to rehearse challenging conversations, test responses to sensitive emails, and gain clarity, all in a private, judgment-free space. In just one of several onboarding sessions, over 800 of our 1,500 employees joined in India. That kind of response only happens when something is truly resonating on the ground. 

We're seeing the same impact elsewhere. In Japan, for example, our CPO there shared with me that she was using Nadia to prepare for sensitive conversations around change, how helpful it's been in slowing her down, reflecting, crafting more considered responses, all in local language. This shows us that it's not just a tool for early career talent. It's something that's supporting even our most experienced leaders around the world. 

One of the most impactful applications of Nadia so far has been goal setting. It's an area that often feels like an administrative chore that comes around once or twice a year, but we've framed it to make it useful, to help people feel energized about the goals that they're setting, feeling like they can align what they're doing to the business. Employees tell Nadia who they are, what they do, and it suggests goals tailored just to them. 

04:48   Driving AI Adoption: Lessons Learned

Lisette: So what have we learned about driving adoption? Firstly, relevance matters. We didn't roll out one generic version. We really worked with teams on the ground to tailor the experience. Secondly, leaders matter. Our senior leaders are using Nadia, and they're sharing what they've got out of it, and they're sharing how they're using it with their direct reports. It's giving others permission to try. And thirdly, storytelling. It works every time. We're showcasing and lifting up the real voices of our employees, real examples, and not shying away from the parts that may need adjusting as we move forward. 

We've also uncovered barriers. One of our future of work experts highlighted a growing gender gap of AI adoption in a recent conference. In early data, women already are less likely to be using AI tools, and that's concerning, often because they see it as cheating or they feel unsure how to engage with it. So we're really now focusing our work in our employee communities to address that, building confidence, breaking down myths, and ensuring we don't allow another digital divide to emerge. And we realized something else. A lot of people don't actually know what coaching is. So we're also focused on educating, not just enabling Nadia, because democratizing coaching means making it both accessible and understood. 

Another benefit: the insights. Because of the way Nadia works, we now have anonymized data on what our people are struggling with most and what they're actively working to improve. And what comes through loud and clear: it's not the technical skills. It's setting clear and measurable goals, communicating with clarity, and active listening. These are foundational human skills, but they're also critical leadership skills in an AI-enabled workplace. We're using this insight to fine-tune our L&D focus and support leaders where it counts. 

06:39   Democratizing Coaching for All Employees

Lisette: At WPP, Nadia has helped us make coaching accessible to thousands who never had it before, deliver global consistency with local nuance, and foster trust, where teams learn from each other and show up with curiosity. But we know adoption isn't the same for everyone. In The UK, we've piloted a generational bridge workshop, and what became clear is that different generations adopt AI differently. Older colleagues weren't resistant. They simply hadn't been given the space and the confidence to explore. Now that's a part of our focus, to show up where it matters across countries, across functions, genders, and generations. We're not waiting for perfect. We're learning in motion with feedback as our compass. 

As we look ahead, our ambition is to embed Nadia into everyday working life, not just the big events like performance management, but to help with the small, meaningful moments that define our work and our lives. But we'll try to listen, learn, and iterate every step of the way. This transformation isn't a one-time event. It's continuous relationships between people, purpose, and possibility, and Nadia is helping us make that relationship stronger and at scale.