AI training for EAs and PAs: what should you actually learn?

AI training for EAs and PAs should teach you to apply the tools you already have at work, whether that is Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, to the actual EA workload: the inbox, the diary, briefing your executive and the tasks you repeat every week. The measure of whether it worked is simple. Your executive gets more of your time and judgement, and you get some of your week back.

I have recruited Executive Assistants for over a decade through our sister company, Lily Shippen. Two years ago AI barely appeared in a brief. It now comes up in a growing number of them, usually as a vague line about being “comfortable with AI tools”, and the EAs I speak to have mostly been handed a licence and told to get on with it. Some ignore it. Some use it badly, pasting in things they should not or trusting answers they have not checked. Very few have been shown how to use it well in their role, because almost nobody has offered to teach them.

Why “learn AI” is the wrong brief

Most AI courses teach you what the tools can do. That is interesting for an afternoon and useless by the following week, because the tools change and the EA job does not. What you need is the reverse: start from the work you already do and learn where AI genuinely helps, where it does not, and where the judgement that makes you valuable still has to be yours. The aim is to be AI-ready, not AI-dependent.

What to learn first

If you only have a day, these are the five things I would want an EA to leave with.

The inbox. Summarising a long thread you have been copied into late, drafting a reply in your executive’s voice rather than the tool’s, and triaging a morning’s email into what needs them, what needs you and what needs nobody. This is where most EAs get their first hour back.

The diary. Not scheduling, which the tools still do clumsily, but preparation: turning a clash into a set of options with the trade-offs written out, and producing the short note that lets your executive decide in thirty seconds.

Briefings. Turning a sixty-page pre-read into a one-page brief, with the three things your executive must know and the two questions they are likely to be asked. Then checking it, because the tool will have missed something and you will know what.

Repeated tasks into saved workflows. Anything you do the same way every week, from the Monday agenda to the monthly expenses summary, can be set up once as a saved prompt or template and run in minutes. This is the difference between using AI and having a system.

The rules. What your organisation allows, what you may never paste into a tool, and how to check an output before it leaves your desk. For an EA this is not a footnote. You hold more confidential information than almost anyone in the building, and one careless paste can undo years of trust.

Which tool should you use?

The one your organisation lets you use. In most corporate environments that means Copilot, because it sits inside Outlook and Teams. Elsewhere it is ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Good training is platform-neutral, because the skills transfer almost entirely, and because the tool you are given will change. Learn to choose between them, not to depend on one.

What good training looks like

Having watched a lot of training budgets spent badly, I would look for four things. It should be built only for EAs and PAs, using your real work rather than generic examples. It should be in person and in a small group, because the conversation about what works in other executives’ offices is half the value. It should end with a plan, not a certificate. It should include a follow-up, because the habit forms in the month after the day, not during it.

What a day with us actually looks like

That is the thinking behind our Future Ready EA & PA Training Day, and it is why the day does not look like a course. There are no slides about what AI is. Instead you spend the day as the EA to a senior executive we have created for the purpose, working through the kind of inbox, diary and briefing problems you deal with every week, with whichever AI tool your own organisation allows. The tool does the drafting. You do the judging.

What makes it different is what happens next. We show you, on your own work, where the tool was right, where it missed things and where it was confidently wrong, and we draw out the knowledge about an executive that only an EA holds and no tool can. You are never the one being tested. By the end of the day you can brief a tool properly, question its answers and know the moment your judgement has to take over. You then turn that into a structured 30-day plan built around your own role, with a follow-up call to review the result.

The day is in person, in London and Manchester, in a deliberately small group, delivered by Emily Partridge, Alice Garside and me. It is open to every EA and PA, whether you have never used AI at work or use it daily, and it is built to work in Copilot as well as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. The investment is £675 plus VAT. The next date is 15 October, with more dates to be released soon. If you want the deeper work on how you operate as a strategic partner, our EA & PA Strategy Training Day is the companion to it, and many EAs do both.

Will AI replace Executive Assistants?

No, but it is changing what the role is valued for. The tasks that used to fill much of the day, drafting, summarising and scheduling, are getting faster. That shifts the weight onto the parts no tool can do: knowing the people, reading the room, understanding what your executive actually cares about this quarter and deciding what deserves their attention. The EAs who learn the tools properly will have more time for exactly that work, and they are the ones who will be hired for it. Our wider EA and PA training is built around those capabilities.

Getting it funded

Most people who attend our training days are funded by their employer, and the case is not hard to make when the return shows up in the executive’s diary within a month. Our free employer funding guide covers when to ask and what to say, and we will send you a one-page overview written for your manager. If you would like to talk it through first, book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with Emily, or see the upcoming dates.

Frequently asked questions