While working for the B.C. provincial government, co-workers Don Murray and Dale Lutz faced a problem: disparate systems and data types made it difficult to share information with the forest companies they worked with. Drawing on their engineering backgrounds, they built what Murray describes as a “data pipe,” connecting users to information across an organization’s many systems. The data-integration platform gave users a single view of the data—from spatial and satellite imagery to 3D building models—and became the foundation of Safe Software, the spatial data technology company the pair co-founded later that year, in 1993, in Surrey, B.C. 

Since its early days, Murray, the company’s CEO, has encouraged staff to experiment with new technology. When ChatGPT emerged in 2022, employees quickly began exploring its potential. By last summer, that approach evolved into a company-wide initiative, with senior leadership challenging every department to find smarter, more efficient ways to use AI.

One of the key ways Safe Software put that practice into mandate was by creating AI champions—employees who guide colleagues through AI use cases and help teams adopt the technology. The approach offered a way to involve employees directly in implementing the technology, rather than relying on top-down directives. Murray first encountered the concept last year at a summit in Dallas. After returning, he presented the idea to company leadership as a way to keep the organization ahead of AI trends. “There was no convincing,” he says.

As AI adoption grows, AI champions are emerging as a strategy to bring more employees on board. These internal leaders translate complex technology into practical solutions, guide pilot projects, and build adoption through peer-to-peer trust. The benefits are clear: a recent survey by the Business Development Bank of Canada found that 97 per cent of small- to medium-sized companies reported real advantages from implementing AI, including increased productivity, improved efficiency, and reduced costs.

Today, Safe Software has 18 AI champions who each spend about 10 per cent of their time helping colleagues explore, experiment with, and adopt AI. Murray says nearly every department now uses the technology: product development teams rely on it for coding, while marketing turns to it to create content for the website and presentations. Employees volunteered for the role, with every team contributing at least one champion to help improve their use of AI.

Samantha Ng, the company’s HR operations technical lead, serves as her department’s AI champion. While her core role involves managing HR systems, including payroll and benefits programming, Ng also finds ways AI can streamline her team’s tasks. She begins by identifying the areas where employees have the most questions, such as payroll or benefits, and uses AI to make those interactions easier, while keeping information private and accurate. Her team now uses AI to handle routine tasks, gather information, create reports and presentations, and review policies.

Since becoming an AI champion, Ng has learned how AI can help handle sensitive inquiries and improve hiring processes. Staff sometimes ask questions that involve personal health information, which could require sharing private details. To address this, Ng created an AI agent that allows employees to ask questions confidentially. The agent simply “spits out what our policy and plan will cover,” she says. Recruiters are also using AI to generate better questions for initial meetings with hiring managers.

In the HR team, Ng sees AI making routine tasks easier, improving communication, and keeping internal materials consistent, while freeing up time for more meaningful work. She says the staff’s initial reaction to AI was mostly positive, though some members weren’t sure at first how it would fit into their roles. “Any initial hesitations came from just not knowing how to use it or fit it in our roles, so once we started connecting and coming together, and sharing real examples, that uncertainty shifted more into enthusiasm,” she says.

That same adoption is happening across other departments. An internal survey last year found that 78 per cent of the marketing team was using AI regularly in their work. Beyond that, employees have found creative ways to apply the technology, from building custom GPT tools to planning campaigns and generating performance reports.

For companies looking to embrace AI champions, Murray recommends viewing AI as a tool to boost productivity while keeping employees’ needs front and centre. “The goal of AI with us was never to replace people,” he says. “As we continue using AI, we’ll want to strengthen, not lose, that human-to-human connection.”

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Ng adds that starting small and working together helps teams focus on practical ways to save time and make a real difference, rather than automating just for the sake of it. “When you bring people into the process and make them feel heard and informed, it helps ease their worries,” she says.

Like Ng, Murray emphasizes that AI is an assistant, not an expert. By empowering AI champions to guide their teams, Safe Software keeps humans at the center of every process and ensures outputs are accurate. “Checking for biases is foundational to building that trust, and it’s still up to us to make sure that this information is correct,” he says.