Questions

• I’m in a junior accounting role and I’m very interested in getting more AI experience. Another team is doing a pilot with an AI tool. How should I approach my boss about getting involved, without sounding like I want to leave my current team?

  Does your organisation have a development process as part of performance reviews? That’s a good moment to bring this up. If not, just ask your manager for a catch-up to talk about your development in your role.

  Be upfront about your intentions. Let your manager know you’re not trying to move teams or step away from your current work. You’ve simply noticed AI projects happening around the business and you’d like to understand AI better, so you can support the business more effectively.

  Explain that you’re not asking for a big shift, just the chance to try a few things in your work and see what could be useful. Before the meeting, think about how this could fit around your current workload. Turning up with a couple of aligned subject ideas will make the conversation easier. It’s a good idea to do a bit of reading or training in your own time, practise a task that has relevance to a past or present company project, or simply ask to sit in on a part of the AI process to see how it works.

  You could also offer to share anything you learn with the team at a team catch-up or send a quick email when you come across something helpful.

  The aim isn’t to change your job. It’s essentially to show you’re looking for small, manageable advancement to build your skills, that will help you and the team as the business leans further into AI.

• Some of our younger team members write their emails almost like texts: no capital letters or punctuation, no sign-off, etc. I know what they want to say, but to me it doesn’t give the most professional impression. Is there a tactful way to let them know what people expect of an email?

  You’re not the only one noticing this. Plenty of managers quietly admit they’re a bit puzzled by how some younger team members write emails: sometimes just a single line that reads more like a text message than workplace communication. Even when you can work out what they mean, it can still feel a bit jarring. The good news is that it’s very fixable.

  It’s rarely about attitude. Most early-career people simply haven’t been shown what good workplace communication looks like. They’ve grown up messaging on their phones and that style naturally slips into email without thought about the professional environment.

  That’s why explaining the ‘why’ is so important: not in a rule-book way but in terms of impact. When an email involves decisions, instructions and stakeholders, clarity matters. A greeting, a couple of clear sentences and a sign-off make it easier for others to act on what you’re saying. It also shapes how you’re seen. Clear communication quietly boosts your professional reputation, even inside the team.

  A supportive approach works best. You could suggest they send you a couple of draft emails for a week or two, so you can give constructive feedback. Or you could turn it into a short 101 session at your next team meeting and frame it with a bit of humour by saying something like, ‘I know this might feel like I’m telling you how to suck eggs, but it’s a good reminder for all of us about how our emails land’.

  That way no one feels singled out and it becomes a shared standard, rather than a correction. Most people genuinely appreciate this, once someone takes the time to explain it.