The Multiverse blog

The companies which embrace these changes and proactively equip their teams with the necessary skills will be the ones who thrive. It’s selecting the right routes to make it happen that is hard.

Northwell Health has partnered with Multiverse to upskill across its information technology workforce to ensure they are familiar with and ready to use the latest, most powerful tools. The training has expanded employees’ skill sets and boosted their productivity, translating to real world impact: money savings and improved operational efficiency.

Through this development partnership, Northwell Health is providing its employees the opportunity to learn new skills and grow their careers through highly personalized training.

The training is being delivered by Multiverse, a tech company delivering high-quality training through applied learning, to 155 Northwell Health learners. Each learner's unique pathway is designed to help them develop their ability to make use of data and AI in a real world setting.

It focuses particularly on realizing the value from the latest data and AI tools, from Microsoft 365 Copilot, to Tableau and PowerBI.

By teaching its employees these critical new skills, Northwell Health is building an AI-native workforce capable of reimagining workflows and business processes. As they explore new AI and data skills, learners believe that they will become more efficient. Already some are reporting they will spend 6 hours less a week on tasks that had previously required manual inputs, and inefficient working practices.

One Northwell Health learner said: “I had no idea what AI could do or how it worked, but now that I understand it better I can see it being valuable in the future for other things I do day-to-day.”

This program has already helped Northwell learners reconfigure their understanding of AI tools and how they can incorporate them in their work. By upskilling their workforce, Northwell Health has supported its employees’ career growth and enabled them to deliver on critical business goals, improving operational efficiency and the company’s bottom line.

Brian Aquart, Northwell Health’s Vice President of Workforce & Community Education said: “We are so excited by the opportunities that this partnership brings for our employees to harness the power of AI to grow their careers and help the company reach its business objectives.”

“Many companies are working towards developing AI native workforces, but Multiverse’s approach to identifying, closing, and preventing skills gaps at scale while delivering against unique business goals has enabled us to continuously analyze and address our skilling needs.”

Elina Petrillo, VP HR Technology, said: “Creating a culture of continuous learning is essential in today’s fast-evolving workplace. By empowering our team to assess their skills and proactively learn new ones, we are fostering growth and driving efficiency. With rising healthcare costs, it’s more important than ever to enable employees to complete tasks faster and strengthen workforce data and software engineering capabilities. Newly acquired skills don’t just improve individual performance—they allow employees to contribute in new, meaningful ways. For just one team at Northwell, upskilling has led to increased productivity and engagement.”

Euan Blair, CEO of Multiverse said: “Northwell Health is a proven leader when it comes to innovation in healthcare. By upskilling its information technology workforce, Northwell is working towards building an AI native workforce capable of transforming and improving its business while ensuring their employees have the skills they need to leverage emerging technologies and to progress in their careers.”

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the world of learning. The burning need for companies and societies to increase productivity and generate new growth through additional AI capabilities, and the skills to deploy them, is the discussion heard from boardrooms to watercoolers across all industries.

At Multiverse, we believe that AI isn’t just the cause of new skills requirements, it’s also the solution.

AI makes personalized, always-on coaching available at scale. It can assist in tailoring learning materials so that individuals get the education they need to achieve their individual goals. It can reduce burdens on educators by supporting on non-core tasks, so they spend more time supporting learners.

So we have put AI at the heart of what Multiverse does for employers and learners. Whether that’s our AI-driven skills diagnosis that translates business goals into personalised learning pathways for individuals, or Atlas, our always-on coach, that works with our expert human coaches to accelerate equitable outcomes for our learners.

Now it’s time to share the principles for the Multiverse approach to AI. We’re choosing now for two reasons:

• The future of Multiverse involves more AI, not less. Given the success of our initial investments in AI, we’re confident that the next phase of Multiverse will involve additional integrations of AI solutions into what we do. Clear principles help guide our teams as they experiment, build and deploy.
• Transparency for our users. AI adoption will be more successful if its users understand the fundamental motivations behind it.

The Multiverse AI Principles

The following principles outline how we’re thinking about the way we build with AI, now and in the future.

AI first

Our AI features are increasingly core to our product offering. We will continue to build with AI as a fundamental driver of how we deliver an outstanding learning experience, woven into the fundamentals. It is not simply a supplement to the experience or just an enabler of things we’d otherwise want to build.

Contextualised

Our AI solutions are contextualised to our customers and our users. Personalization sits at the heart of being able to educate at scale, and this is a key benefit of leveraging AI.

Fair and non-discriminatory

Our mission has equitable access at its heart, and AI at Multiverse will be no different. When we deploy AI solutions for learning environments we seek to do so with fairness and in a non-discriminatory manner. We firmly believe that it is necessary for AI to neither create nor reinforce bias.

Consequential

At Multiverse we believe the principle value of learning is in the real world application of skills, and the tangible consequences of that application. The same is true of our approach to AI. We will only incorporate AI systems in our products when we have a deep conviction that they will drive real world value. Our AI should be a tool, not a toy.

Transparent

We want our AI systems to be explainable, to foster confidence in their outcomes for both Multiverse and our learners. When we deploy AI, we will ensure it is underpinned by a robust understanding of the logical steps and rationale behind its decisions, including its capabilities and limitations.

Human in the loop

Multiverse AI will always be built and run with the careful guidance of Multiverse people - for feedback, direction and fairness. We want AI to complement and enhance the expertise of our coaches, tech talent and customer support teams, not replace it. This commitment ensures that AI complements human judgment rather than replacing it, allowing us to harness the best of both worlds.

How Multiverse uses these guidelines

Our principles are core to how we are building AI systems at Multiverse, but they are not intended to be static; they will evolve as our understanding of AI and its impact on learning grows. We are dedicated to continuously evaluating our AI implementations and training methods to ensure they remain aligned with company values and ethical responsibilities, as well as our compliance and legal obligations.

These principles have been inspired by input from both our AI Advisory Board, and the Multiverse Customer Advisory Board. As a result, we may update our principles in line with updated inputs.

The end goal: empowering learning and growth

Ultimately, our AI principles are about more than compliance; they are about fostering a culture of learning and growth for our team, for the benefit of our customers and learners. We see AI as a powerful ally in personal and professional development. By embedding these principles into every aspect of our AI strategy, we aim to create a learning ecosystem that not only prepares individuals for the future, but also contributes to society.

At Multiverse, our commitment to the principled use of AI is coupled with our core mission: to create equitable access to economic opportunity, for everyone. As we move forward, our partners are with us on the journey.

And if 2024 was about experimentation with generative AI (Gen AI), 2025 is about proving value for the bottom line as leaders seek to understand the ROI of AI.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find any 2025 trends or predictions without a mention of AI – so we've dedicated this whole article to three AI trends shaped by the skills agenda.

Trend 1: Upskilling to address an AI talent shortage

The roles of AI engineer, data governance manager and AI researcher all feature in the top 10 fastest-growing jobs in the UK, according to LinkedIn’s 2025 ‘Jobs on the Rise’ research.

A tightening labour market for in-demand AI and data skills will force leaders to consider their options.

The same study found that 45% of UK HR professionals feel their company doesn’t have a clear view of the skills it will need in the coming years. Responding quickly to new skills gaps will be a crucial challenge for people teams.

Yet, the answer may already sit within their four walls, with an opportunity to upskill and create new career paths for existing employees.

The appetite from staff is there: our ROI of AI research found that 83% of workers think AI skills will help them to drive more value for their employer in the next 12 months.

With AI on the agenda, leaders can capitalise on this appetite to learn new skills, while making cost efficiencies through employee upskilling.

AI upskilling is the best place to start – explore how to unleash productivity and make AI your competitive advantage.

Trend 2: Agentic AI experimentation on the rise

Agentic AI has been dubbed as the ‘new frontier in generative AI’ by PwC and called out by Gartner as one of its Strategic Technology Trends for 2025.

In essence, this is where GenAI is used to create ‘intelligent agents’ which can make automated (or semi-automated) decisions on their own. Uses are emerging in trend analysis, resource allocation and real-time problem-solving.

With workers spending an average of 14.3 hours a week on data tasks – according to our Skills Intelligence report – there’s a clear case for AI agents to help boost productivity by tackling data-intensive jobs when guided by a human.

While this is the new frontier, it will be early adopters who have the right skills, data governance, and policies in place to push forward with experimental use cases in 2025.

We will see ‘customer service AI agents’ becoming more commonplace, but full-scale adoption of agentic AI is still a while away.

In 2025, expect proof of concepts to be a priority – and for those early adopters to move quickly.

Trend 3: Policy and regulation aims to keep pace with AI

In the UK, the Government launched its AI Opportunities Action Plan to push forward AI adoption and deploy AI across the public sector.

In January, it backed a report of 50 recommendations on how the country can best use AI, written by tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford.

Closing the national skills gap is highlighted as crucial for the UK to become an "AI superpower."

Meanwhile, the incoming EU AI Act will apply to any AI system used inside the EU. The legislation seeks to protect individuals and encourage investment, as well as put a welcome emphasis on AI literacy and skills development.

Businesses globally have found it a challenge to keep pace with the rate of technological advancement, due to a lack of workforce skills. In the UK and Europe at least — both these initiatives will provide additional structure for leaders with their long-term approach to AI.

L&G has launched a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Business Value programme for 50 colleagues in partnership with education technology company Multiverse. The initiative is part of L&G’s drive to adapt to the global changes that accelerating AI technology has brought forward in recent years. [1]

AI adoption is estimated to significantly boost labour productivity growth in financial and professional services over the coming years; the City of London Corporation estimates a boost of 12% by 2025 and of 50% by 2030. [2]

Being that the investment management sector has the potential to embed AI in nearly every one of its functions[3], the Financial Conduct Authority and other regulatory bodies have put a focus on the safe development and deployment of AI[4]. Through the AI for Business Value programme, L&G will equip its employees with the tools needed to responsibly adopt AI in the workplace, as well as taking advantage of potential productivity gains.

Derrick Hastie, Chief Technology Officer, Asset Management, L&G: “We are very excited to provide an opportunity for our colleagues to earn a professional qualification in AI through a business lens. Most importantly, the apprenticeship will help our participants to recognise growth opportunities and leverage AI technologies; creating strategies that can be implemented across L&G’s capabilities.

"Having completed an apprenticeship early on in my career, I am a huge advocate of continuous professional development. Through this programme, we want to support our colleagues’ professional aspirations whilst building a wide net of tech skills that will be key for change resilience.”

Throughout the 13-month course, funded by the apprenticeship levy, participants from across the business will learn to better leverage L&G’s technology tools to develop a robust AI strategy; developing tangible benefits that will drive business value through cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and automated manual processes.

The training will be delivered by Multiverse, a tech company that specialises in high-quality training through applied learning. Multiverse has trained more than 20,000 apprentices at over 1,500 organisations in data, AI, and digital skills since 2016.

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer, Multiverse: “L&G is an organisation built on principles of responsible investment for long term growth, an ethos reflected in its staff development strategy. By equipping its teams to make responsible data-led decisions, L&G can enhance operations and ensure security and protection in the fast evolving digital workplace.”

As part of the Investment Association’s Technology Working Group, L&G has already played a key role in assessing the ways in which UK asset managers are already leveraging AI to drive efficiency, automating routine tasks to boost productivity, and improving the quality of products and services offered.

[1] A timeline of technology transformation: How has the pace changed? | World Economic Forum

[2] Can AI actually increase human productivity? | World Economic Forum, The future of AI & the workforce

[3] Technology Working Group AI Report Oct 2024.pdf

[4] AI Update, A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation - GOV.UK

Richard Cotton, Co-Founder at Maikai, said: “In this digitally driven world,
our clients are looking to develop their teams with the latest AI, tech and data skills. It is anticipated that 40% of workers will need to reskill in the next three
years due to AI, and we are excited to be partnering with Multiverse to extend
our capabilities in this area. Their measured and applied human-centred
learning models are transforming how professional apprenticeships work,
helping our clients to build resilient and future-facing organisations.”

Carly Becker, VP, Strategic Alliances at Multiverse, said: “Nowhere has the explosion of data, analysis tools, and predictive insights been more profoundly seen than in the world of professional sport. The pursuit of competitive edge, and performance excellence, is now driven by data. But the ability of organisations to harness this superpower is too often hindered by the skill set of their teams. In partnership with Maikai, we’re excited to play our role ensuring individuals of every age and career stage feel the benefit of technological skills in their careers and in their organisations.”

Helen brings a wealth of experience in the tech industry, most recently leading the engineering team behind Spotify's open-source Backstage product. Her expertise will be instrumental in driving innovation and scaling our engineering organisation as we continue to deliver cutting-edge learning experiences.

A passion for building and empowering:

Helen brings over 15 years of experience in the tech industry, most recently leading the engineering team behind Spotify's open-source Backstage product. Backstage streamlines workflows for developers, and its success is a testament to Helen's leadership in building user-centric and efficient developer tools.

Prior to that, Helen played a key role in launching Podcasts at Spotify, a major expansion of the platform's content offerings at the time. Her dedication to innovation and user experience is evident throughout her career.

"Growing up in a family of educators," says Helen, "I understand the transformative power of education. In today's world, upskilling is essential, and I'm excited to create a learning experience that equips the next generation of talent with the skills they need to thrive."

Beyond her technical expertise, Helen is passionate about fostering strong communities. She is a strong believer in building an engineering culture that not only drives performance but also empowers engineers to learn, grow, and contribute meaningfully to Multiverse's mission.

This new addition underscores our commitment to building a world-class organisation, filled with top talent. Want to join it? We're hiring.

We’re on a mission to provide equitable access to economic opportunity for everyone. Here, we want to set out how Atlas is helping us to do that, because when combined with our industry-leading human coaches, it allows us to offer 1:1 tutoring - which is proven to dramatically improve learning outcomes - at scale. Together our coaches combine with Atlas to deliver highly personalized, effective, guidance 24/7, whenever our learners need it

We also want to explore what we’re doing to improve - because no good tech organization only celebrates its wins. We’re constantly iterating and learning ourselves. We'll touch on what’s new and what's next for Atlas at the end.

We often say that AI is useless unless people can use it. And at Multiverse, we also want to understand how people are using it. So let’s dive in.

Equitable access

First, let’s look at users - and what it could tell us about AI adoption.

We’ve seen tremendous growth in usage, with a roughly four-fold increase in the number of daily users in the past six months. Likewise, the number of messages per day has skyrocketed - we’re now seeing 5x the volume compared with six months ago. We also hit a new peak ‘helpfulness’ rating of 97% in January - which has remained consistently above 95% since August 2024.

But who are those users? We previously reported greater uptake among the over 40s and those with additional learning needs. That still holds true, with 46% of over 40s using it vs. 42% of the 25-39s and 34% of those 24 and under. This stands counter to the trend illustrated in some of the latest UK government AI usage data, which suggests that 18-34 year olds are most likely to use AI tools like LLM-based chatbots.

Meanwhile we have proportionally equal of male and female usage from the past six months, with 42% of each group using Atlas. Again, this bucks the trend of AI usage skewing more male, according to that same government data.

As for the racial demographic of our users, it’s broadly similar across ethnicities, with 40% Asian, 35% Black, 42% Multi-Racial, and 44% White learners using the tool. These proportions have grown steadily among each group, though adoption among Black learners remains slightly lower than average.

Economic opportunity

We also want to explain a little bit about outcomes, and in particular how people are using the tool. We’ve found that some of the top ways that Atlas is being used include:

• As a learning partner: helping learners to unpick how they’ve arrived at incorrect answers within their own work.
• As a curriculum guide: augmenting program material with advice for how to apply it to their particular role, or explaining specific concepts in a new way.
• As an impact evaluator: helping to uncover the impact of a user’s learning, by teasing out insights on what they’ve achieved, and helping calculate outcomes

While we always intended for Atlas to act as a technical and learning guide, we hadn’t anticipated the popularity of using Atlas to understand impact.

This hints at how Atlas could be used to improve individuals’ economic outcomes. What better way to talk to your manager about a promotion or a pay rise, than armed with data and insights on the impact you’ve been able to drive for your team? Could AI be your next career coach?

This also has perhaps even greater implications. It hints at how organizations can start to use AI tools to understand the impact of their wider workforce. We’re really just at the beginning of realizing the full potential for this tool.

Public vs private sector uptake

Of course, not all customers or learners are the same.

Working closely with more than 1,500 partners from every sector means we understand the unique differences in how different organizations learn and apply their skills. As you can imagine, the needs of a financial services company are vastly different from the needs of an NHS trust. The same holds true for what they require from Atlas - naturally, applying skills in a healthcare or local government setting differs from a commercial organization.

To investigate this, we compared behaviours between the public and private sectors. And found something remarkable.

There is an unfair cliché that in the public sector, technology is treated with suspicion or underutilized - that public sector organizations invest into technology without having the requisite skills to make it work.

According to our data, though, that assumption isn’t borne out. Comparing a sample of our biggest private sector customers with over 80 NHS and 50 local council partners, we found that proportionally more people are using Atlas in the public sector (66% vs 57%). This suggests that in the right environment, public sector workers are just as curious about and capable of using AI tools as their private sector counterparts. We just need to enable them in the right way.

What’s more, we know that public sector organizations are under pressure to deliver more with greater efficiency. AI has a huge potential to help with that, and Atlas is just the beginning.

What’s new and next for Atlas?

Finally, what can we do better?

We’re continually iterating to make Atlas more user-friendly and useful to the learners on our programs. Recent areas of exploration for us have included:

• Atlas as a learning co-pilot – we’ve made changes to Atlas to make it more contextually-aware, responsive and discoverable within the Multiverse platform. So Atlas now recognises the content learners are looking at whilst they are learning on the Multiverse platform. This means it can offer more relevant guidance, as well as displaying dynamic prompts based on what learners might want to know more about.
• AI-human handover - we know there are some circumstances where only chatting to a human will help. Atlas can now help smooth that handover by summarising a learner’s interaction when it hands the conversation over to a human coach. This makes it easier for the coaches to provide timely and thoughtful responses rather than spending a lot of time catching up on the chat.

Looking ahead, we want to embed Atlas more fully into the learner experience throughout their program, and find new ways to make it an even more helpful and intuitive learning partner.

And as always, we won’t take ourselves too seriously. You may have spotted SantaAtlas – you can bet there’ll be more surprises up our sleeve when it comes to Atlas’s sense of personal style. Any suggestions? Let us know…

Asha joins us with a proven track record of success in building and scaling high-growth companies, most recently as co-founder of Framework. Her expertise in operations, sales and product management will be invaluable as we continue to scale our impact and deliver exceptional learning experiences to our learners.

A champion for growth and opportunity:

Asha joins Multiverse with a wealth of experience in operations, sales, product management, and talent acquisition. She co-founded Framework, a revolutionary edtech company that provides high-growth tech companies with a digital learning experience for their employees. Asha successfully led Framework through a rebrand and pivot, demonstrating her adaptability and strategic thinking.

Prior to Framework, Asha held leadership roles at Education First and boasts a diverse background spanning sales, partnerships, and product development.

"I'm passionate about helping people from all backgrounds grow further in their careers," says Asha. "Multiverse's mission to deliver high-quality, applied learning at scale deeply resonates with me, and I'm excited to be a part of the team."

Asha's proven track record in leading transformative change and her commitment to diversity and inclusion make her a valuable asset to Multiverse. She is eager to leverage her experience to further enhance the quality of Multiverse's offerings and help the company reach new heights.

This new addition underscores our commitment to building a world-class organisation, filled with top talent. Want to join it? We're hiring.

Tell us about your recent career change at Multiverse.

I started at Multiverse over three years ago as a Learning Designer, hired to develop bespoke programs for our US Google partnership. The initial success of that partnership, due to the need to scale the project (developing six programs is a lotof work!), led me to move into a role as a Senior Learning Designer. Subsequently, I progressed to Senior Manager, where I was responsible for managing a team of Learning Designers working across a variety of bespoke programs.

When this new role opened up on the Enterprise team, I had established myself as an expert in creating bespoke programs for our global customers (Google, Verizon, Babcock, to name a few). The role fit well with the skill set I had been developing over the past few years, as well as giving me an opportunity to manage a larger team.

How are you enjoying your new team and remit?

I'm doing my best! This new role requires me to build strong relationships with leaders and teams across Multiverse, which has been a really awesome way to learn about the intricacies of our business and meet some really smart and passionate people.

It also requires me to be creative and challenge my assumptions about what's possible. My team’s aim is to unlock new revenue opportunities by building custom content for customers, but it's not always obvious how we should be doing this. The role requires my team and I to think critically about our product as a whole, and find ways to improve or modify it to meet customers needs.

Any career change comes with its challenges, what did you have to overcome and how did you approach this?

I mentioned this earlier, but I was independently developing six programs and the customer had high-expectations and often required us to create additional resources that took up a lot of time and energy. I needed a way to objectively demonstrate the workload to effectively manage client expectations and advocate for support within Multiverse. To address these challenges, I invested significant time in implementing project management tools and adopting Story Points as a framework for capacity planning. The data I was able to collect helped me visualize the scope of the project I was working on, and helped me identify trends in the workload over the year to determine when I needed the most support. These reporting mechanisms ultimately led to me building a case for a larger team, and pushed me into a management position.

If you could share one piece of advice for someone looking to develop their career or move internally, what would it be?

It's important to be open with your manager about your career goals and aspirations. Share what matters most to you in your role and how you envision your professional growth. These conversations can feel daunting! Especially if your ambitions seem challenging or different from current opportunities, but your manager should be supportive of your success, and work with you to get there. You might be surprised at how transparency can unlock new possibilities. Simply put, your manager and colleagues can't effectively support you if they don't know your goals and what you're striving for.

Want to join a company where career mobility is a priority? We’re hiring.

Sheffield City Council is investing in a strategic upskilling initiative for 150 of its team, allowing the organisation to leverage technology to improve operational performance and resident experience.

The Data Academy will contribute to the council’s Future Sheffield initiative, providing staff with enhanced digital skills to modernise processes and improve efficiencies. This will allow the council to focus more time on providing services to Sheffield residents while making the organisation more cost-effective.

Funded by the Apprenticeship Levy, training is being delivered by Multiverse, a tech company that identifies, closes and prevents skills gaps, through personalised, on-the-job learning. Multiverse has trained more than 16,000 apprentices in AI, data and digital skills since 2016.

The Sheffield City Council cohort will embark on a range of Multiverse courses, including ‘Data & Insights for Business Decisions’, a level 3 apprenticeship, and ‘Data Fellowship’, a level 4 programme. Once completed, colleagues will be able to conduct data-led projects and encourage data driven decision making, to unlock cost saving opportunities.

The Multiverse Skills Intelligence Report, released in August 2024, highlighted a significant challenge faced by local governments and councils due to a lack of data skills. This shortfall leads to 26% of employees' time spent on data-related tasks being unproductive. The new academy demonstrates how Sheffield City Council is taking action to reduce the skills gap.

Cllr Fran Belbin, Deputy Leader at Sheffield City Council and Chair of the Future Sheffield Members Working Group, said: “The launch of this 150-strong Academy not only marks a commitment to our colleagues’ professional development, but also to our local community. As we seek to enhance operations and reduce time spent with data, we can focus on what matters – providing residents with the highest quality service.”

Multiverse combines work and learning to unlock economic opportunity for everyone. It works with more than 1,500 organisations to close critical skill gaps in the workforce in AI, data and tech, through a new kind of apprenticeship.

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse, said: “This is the start of a partnership that will provide Sheffield City Council with the tools for organisational transformation. Residents across the UK are reliant on their local authorities, and this is putting Sheffield on the front foot to deliver real value and efficiency.”