Bell: Accelerating AI adoption through recognition

Bell, Canada’s largest communications and telecommunications company, moved beyond AI as a strategic priority and made adoption a visible, celebrated behaviour — using recognition to drive confidence, consistency, and momentum. Here’s how.

From strategy to adoption: Making AI part of everyday work

Artificial Intelligence is a core strategic priority at Bell. To unlock AI’s full potential, leaders recognised that employees across every role and business unit needed to feel confident experimenting, learning from one another, and weaving AI into their everyday work.

Bell’s challenge wasn’t access to AI — it was turning organisation-wide adoption into a behaviour, not just a strategic priority.

By partnering with Achievers and anchoring its AI strategy in recognition, Bell found a powerful way to bring that behaviour to life — normalising AI use, celebrating progress at every stage, and accelerating adoption across the enterprise.

The goal: Turning a bold AI strategy into everyday behaviour

Bell recognised that AI adoption couldn’t live exclusively within technical teams. Employees across all functions stood to benefit, but only if AI felt accessible, relevant, and easy to use in their day-to-day work.

They needed an approach that:

• Encouraged internal experimentation
• Recognised progress at every stage of the AI learning journey
• Reinforced responsible and compliant AI usage
• Scaled consistently across all business units

The approach: Using recognition to make AI adoption visible and repeatable

Bell partnered with Achievers to embed AI adoption directly into its recognition experience — making progress easy to see and even easier to celebrate.

Instead of positioning AI as a top-down mandate, Bell introduced a dedicated AI Adopter recognition module within its internal recognition platform, Better Together. The goal was simple: spotlight employees who were learning, experimenting, and applying AI in meaningful ways — and make those behaviours visible to everyone.

The strategy was supported by a thoughtful change management approach designed to build momentum and trust, including:

• A structured communications plan aligned to Bell’s broader AI strategy
• Company-wide announcements and in-platform messaging timed to the module launch
• An AI Adoption landing page that connected employees to learning resources and context
• A full rollout across all business units, not just technology teams
• Bilingual delivery in English and French to ensure accessibility and inclusion

Recognition was designed to meet employees wherever they were in their AI journey — from first-time users taking early steps to advanced practitioners pushing what was possible.

The Impact: Recognition-driven momentum and enterprise-wide AI adoption

By anchoring AI adoption in recognition, Bell quickly saw momentum build — and spread organically across the organisation.

The results over a four-month period were clear:

• AI Adopter recognitions expanded from eight to 13 business units, a 62.5% increase in enterprise adoption
• 2,146 recognitions were sent by 750 unique nominators, signalling sustained, peer-driven participation
• 1,683 employees were recognised, reinforcing AI behaviours across teams and roles
• 64% of recognitions were points-based, while 36% were social, supporting both tangible and lightweight behaviour reinforcement
• 21% of recognitions received a leadership boost, underscoring strong executive and manager support

In total, 1.34 million points were awarded to reinforce AI adoption behaviours — making progress both visible and meaningful across the business.

Just as importantly, the stories shared through recognition painted a clear picture of how AI was being used across Bell — from summarizing documents and translating content to building presentations, analysing information, and improving efficiency in everyday work.

With strong adoption underway, Bell is focused on building what comes next — continuing to embed recognition as a core part of its AI journey.

• Future efforts include:
• Refining recognition criteria to more explicitly reflect meaningful AI adoption behaviours
• Expanding recognition beyond peer-to-peer moments, including achievements completed outside the platform
• Leveraging profile highlights and badges to signal AI expertise and a commitment to continuous learning

Together, these efforts will help Bell sustain momentum, reinforce responsible AI use, and continue positioning AI adoption as a shared, celebrated behaviour. Not just a strategic priority, but a lasting part of how work gets done every day.