EY launches AI Academy to support Australian businesses in upskilling their AI workforce

• The EY AI Academy offers structured, hands-on learning pathways from foundational AI through to advanced AI applications, tailored to role and industry.
• The program is designed to help organisations build skills, confidence and governance so they can responsibly scale AI and deliver measurable outcomes.
• EY road-tested AI Academy learning internally across Oceania, with thousands of completed learning pathways and strong adoption of AI tools.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, 17 MARCH 2026. Ernst & Young, Australia (EY Australia) today announced the Australian launch of the EY AI Academy, a learning and adoption program designed to help organisations build the skills, confidence and governance needed to scale artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly and provide measurable business outcomes.

As Australian organisations move beyond experimentation, many are looking for a structured way to lift AI capability across leaders and teams, while embedding responsible AI practices.

The EY Australian AI Workforce Blueprint shows the gap clearly. More than two-thirds of Australian office workers use AI, but only a third have received formal training, from their employer despite daily users reporting time savings of four or more hours a week.

The EY AI Academy provides personalised, role-based learning experiences designed for executives, people managers, technical specialists and frontline teams. In practice, it combines capability building with hands on tool adoption, so AI becomes normal work, not a pilot or side project.

EY teams in Australia have already piloted delivering AI Academy aligned learning and enablement as part of major technology change programs. For one Australian organisation rolling out an enterprise-wide AI solution, more than 3,600 people completed the EY AI Academy training and average confidence increased from 2.6 to 3.9.

The Academy is delivered through a phased approach, starting with a clear assessment of current skills that informs a bespoke upskilling strategy, followed by co-design workshops, and implementation that supports continuous learning over time.

“Right now the biggest barrier to scaling AI in Australia is alignment. People have very different understandings of what AI does, how to use it safely, and apply it to day-to-day work. The EY AI Academy is designed to close that knowledge gap with practical learning and clear governance, so organisations can move faster with confidence,” said Katherine Boiciuc, EY Regional Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Oceania.

“If organisations want AI to be trusted and adopted at scale, leaders need to listen, engage and communicate clearly how risks are being addressed. The EY AI Academy helps teams build real capability while embedding responsible AI practices from the outset,” said Boiciuc.

The EY team applied AI Academy aligned learning across its own workforce in Oceania. In 2025, over 2,200 completed AI learning pathways across the AI Academy curriculum and 2,491 hours of AI learning were delivered. A survey of employees using EY-approved AI tools for work found the strongest impact in high-friction workflows such as meeting minutes and action tracking, proposals, and quality assurance.

The EY AI Academy draws on a library of 150+ learning modules, 30+ demos and hands-on exercises, and 350+ real-world use cases that can be tailored by role and industry.

Organisations interested in participating in EY AI Academy or exploring an executive briefing can contact the EY team or visit www.ey.com/en_au/ai-academy

-ENDS-

Media Contact:

Tim Madin
EY Regional Strategic Communications Leader, Oceania
+61 2 8295 6773
Tim.Madin@au.ey.com

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