# The Human Co.

> AI consultancy for UK SMEs and mid-market teams, founded by Paul Thomas: AI training, embedding and change management. We take teams from AI licences sitting unused to people using AI confidently every day: discovery, AI strategy and governance, then training and embedding.

## Key pages
- [The AI consultancy programme for UK teams](https://thehumanco.org/programme): An AI consultancy programme for UK SMEs: discovery, the strategy and governance for how AI is used, then hands-on training so it gets used every day.
- [About The Human Co.](https://thehumanco.org/about): About The Human Co. and its founder, Paul Thomas, an AI consultant and trainer based in Sheffield, UK, focused on workplace AI adoption.
- [AI Resource Hub](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources): Field notes, prompt packs, assessments and tools from inside live AI engagements.
- [AI Readiness Diagnostic](https://thehumanco.org/diagnostic): A free, five-minute diagnostic of where your team actually stands on AI.
- [Book a call](https://thehumanco.org/book): Book a 30-minute call with Paul Thomas.

## Writing, guides and resources
- [Everyone Needs AI Training. Nobody Trusts the Consultants.](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-training-and-the-trust-problem): AI skills demand is at a record. Seventy per cent of clients wouldn't trust a report prepared with AI. What that contradiction means for how you train people.
- [Do You Need to Label AI Content? EU Rules for UK Businesses](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/eu-ai-content-labelling-rules-uk-businesses): Article 50 of the EU AI Act took effect on 2 August 2026. What has to be labelled, whether the rules reach a UK business, and what to do next.
- [Claude Opus 5 review: what it catches that the others miss](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/claude-opus-5-in-practice): I tested Opus 5, Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5 and Haiku 4.5 on seven work tasks. Opus 5 caught a planted error the others missed, in 3 runs of 3. What it costs.
- [How to Set Up and Run Claude Agents with Opus 5](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-set-up-an-ai-agent-at-work): How to set up a Claude agent, what Opus 5 can actually do unsupervised, and the three conditions that stop it breaking anything. Tested over 18 runs.
- [Claude Opus 5 price: $5 and $25 per million tokens](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/anthropic-launches-claude-opus-5): Anthropic has released Claude Opus 5 at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output, the same as Opus 4.8 and half the price of Fable 5.
- [What Andy Burnham Means for AI in the UK](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/andy-burnham-ai-policy): Andy Burnham is the UK's new Prime Minister. What his first 48 hours, his record and his AI strategy rewrite signal for businesses adopting AI.
- [AI Governance Framework for UK SMEs: Policy That Holds](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-governance-and-policy-for-uk-smes): A practical AI usage policy for UK small businesses: acceptable use, data classification, risk-tiering, and what UK regulators actually expect.
- [How Much Does AI Consulting Cost in the UK?](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-much-does-ai-consulting-cost-uk): What AI consulting actually costs in the UK: what's fixed, what's scoped per engagement, and what to look for when you compare provider pricing.
- [How to Choose an AI Training Provider for Your Business](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-choose-an-ai-training-provider): A buyer's guide to choosing an AI training or consulting provider: the questions to ask, red flags to watch for, and what a good engagement looks like.
- [AI Strategy Consulting: Writing a Strategy That Gets Used](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-write-an-ai-strategy): What good AI strategy consulting produces, section by section: the working strategy document, and how it differs from the vision slide that gets filed.
- [Is Your Organisation Ready for AI?](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/is-your-organisation-ready-for-ai): Readiness isn't a licence count. A founder's honest take on the three things that actually predict whether AI adoption sticks, before you spend a penny.
- [Why I won't be using Fable 5, and why you shouldn't either](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/why-i-wont-use-fable-5): Claude Fable 5 is Anthropic's most capable model and its most expensive. I repriced 3 billion tokens of my agent usage to see what the premium actually buys.
- [Claude Sonnet 5 review: what it gets right, and where it slips](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/claude-sonnet-5-in-practice): A hands-on review of Claude Sonnet 5 against GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro and Sonnet 4.6: real work tasks, real outputs, and the error only the old model missed.
- [US clears Anthropic's Mythos 5 for 100+ agencies](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/anthropic-mythos-5-us-release): The US has cleared Anthropic to offer Claude Mythos 5 to more than 100 agencies and companies, partly reversing June's ban. Fable 5 stays restricted.
- [GLM 5.2 beat Claude. The leaderboard is not the story](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/glm-5-2-vs-claude-what-it-means): GLM 5.2, a cheap open Chinese model, topped a design leaderboard and its CEO vowed to catch Anthropic by 2027. The real story is capable AI getting cheap, fast.
- [How I keep track of dozens of conversations without taking a single note](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-i-keep-track-of-conversations-with-ai): The AI meeting-transcription workflow I use to turn dozens of calls into a searchable second brain: how the loop works, its limits, and how to set up your own.
- [The AI RAM crisis: why the Steam Machine costs more](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-ram-crisis-steam-machine): A deep dive into the 2026 memory shortage: why the new Steam Machine, phones and PCs cost more, how AI data centres caused the RAM crisis, and when it eases.
- [Free AI courses with a certificate: what's free in 2026](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/free-ai-courses-with-certificate-2026): Not every 'free AI certificate' is free. A 2026 comparison of which AI courses certify you for free, which charge, and what it's worth to employers.
- [Free AI training in 2026: what's actually free (UK)](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/free-ai-training-courses-uk-2026): A verified guide to free AI training in the UK for 2026: which courses are genuinely free, which give a free certificate, and where the trial traps hide.
- [Free AI training for charities and non-profits (UK, 2026)](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/free-ai-training-for-charities-uk): Free AI training built specifically for UK charities: what exists, what it covers, and how to make it stick without turning it into a project.
- [Free AI training from the UK government: is it any good?](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/free-ai-training-uk-government): Free AI training from the UK government in 2026: the AI Skills Boost, the Skills Hub and Skills Bootcamps, who can access them, and whether they're worth it.
- [How to get good at AI with free courses: a plan, not a list](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-get-good-at-ai-with-free-courses): Free AI training is everywhere. What's harder to find is a sequence that turns it into real, usable skill. Here's a concrete plan that works, mostly for free.
- [How to use AI at work: ten things worth doing, and how to do them well](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-use-ai-at-work): How to use AI at work: the ten most useful jobs to hand it, how to do each well and safely, and the one habit that turns it into productivity, not workslop.
- [Half of London firms say their workforce lacks the skills for AI, survey finds](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/london-firms-ai-skills-gap): A Survation survey for BusinessLDN found half of London firms say their workforce lacks the skills for the age of AI, with significant gaps at a record high.
- [How to use AI for meeting prep, notes and action items](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-for-meeting-notes-and-action-items): How to use Claude or Copilot to draft a meeting agenda up front and turn a raw transcript into decisions, action items with owners and a follow-up email.
- [Using AI for spreadsheets: formulas and quick analysis](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-for-spreadsheets-formulas-and-data): Learn how to use AI to write and explain Excel and Google Sheets formulas, clean messy data, and get quick analysis without having to remember every function.
- [Build a first-draft slide deck with AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/build-a-first-draft-slide-deck-with-ai): Learn how to use AI to structure a slide deck narrative, write slide content, and generate talking points, so you can go from document to draft deck in minutes.
- [How to draft customer and client replies with AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/draft-customer-replies-with-ai): Learn how to use Claude to draft accurate, on-tone customer replies and complaint responses, and build a reusable template library for common queries.
- [Get up to speed on any unfamiliar topic using AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/get-up-to-speed-on-any-topic-with-ai): How to use AI to get up to speed on a new subject fast: pitch the question at the right level, build from orientation to nuance, and verify what you're told.
- [AI is splitting the labour market into two paths, PwC report finds](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/pwc-ai-jobs-barometer-two-paths): PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, from a billion job adverts, finds AI splitting the labour market in two and raising demand and pay for human skills.
- [Summarise long documents, email threads and meetings with AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/summarise-long-documents-and-meetings-with-ai): Use AI to pull decisions, action items and open questions out of long documents, email threads and meeting transcripts, and verify the output before you act.
- [Turn messy notes into SOPs and process docs with AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/turn-messy-notes-into-sops-with-ai): Learn how to use Claude to turn brain dumps, Slack threads and meeting transcripts into clear, structured SOPs and process docs your team can actually follow.
- [How to use AI to pressure-test your ideas and decisions](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/use-ai-to-pressure-test-your-thinking): Learn how to use Claude as a thinking partner to stress-test plans, find blind spots, and red-team the assumptions behind a decision before you commit to it.
- [Write and debug scripts with AI (without being a developer)](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/write-and-debug-scripts-with-ai): How to use AI to write, explain and debug PowerShell, Python, SQL and regex scripts for routine sysadmin and ops tasks, without knowing the syntax by heart.
- [How to write and rewrite work emails with AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/write-and-rewrite-emails-with-ai): Learn how to use Claude or Copilot to draft, rewrite and fix the tone of work emails, including the awkward ones, without it sounding like a chatbot wrote it.
- [Claude Design update: what design-sync actually does](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/claude-design-update-brand-consistency): The June 2026 Claude Design update, in plain terms: what design-sync does, how the design-to-code handover works now, and why it uses fewer tokens.
- [What Anthropic's 235,000-user AI study means for your rollout](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/what-anthropics-research-means-for-your-ai-rollout): A detailed read of Anthropic's study of 235,000 Claude Code users, turned into concrete steps for a CEO: what to spend on, how to scale it, how to keep it safe.
- [UK commits £200m to AI adoption and skills at first summit](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/uk-ai-adoption-summit): The UK government has committed more than £200m to AI adoption and skills at its first AI Adoption Summit, aiming to become the G7's fastest AI adopter.
- [Anthropic disables Fable 5, Mythos 5 after US export order](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/anthropic-fable-mythos-disabled): Anthropic has disabled its two newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all customers after a US export-control order barred access by foreign nationals.
- [What twenty years in L&D brings to a 24-hour AI hackathon](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/what-ld-brings-to-an-ai-hackathon): I've joined Hack-Nation's 6th Global AI Hackathon in July. Why an L&D background is an advantage in a room of engineers, and what I'm going there to learn.
- [AI Agents: a beginner's course for managers and team leaders](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-agents): A short, free course on AI agents and agentic AI for managers and team leaders: the clearest beginner explainers from IBM, with my notes on what each one means at work.
- [Microsoft's Seven New AI Models: What Leaders Need to Know](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/microsoft-seven-new-ai-models): Microsoft just launched seven of its own AI models, from a frontier-class reasoner to a tiny coding model. Here's what it actually means for decision-makers.
- [AI Fluency: a free course for managers and team leaders](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-fluency): A practical, video-led walk through Anthropic's AI Fluency framework, the four D's, and what each one means for a team that has to use this on Monday.
- [The Learning ROI Calculator](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/learning-roi-calculator): A calculator that turns your training costs and Kirkpatrick evaluation ratings into a defensible ROI figure for any learning programme, exportable as a PDF.
- [The AI Prompt Pack for Managers](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/manager-prompt-pack): 60 ready-to-use AI prompts for managers, across the six jobs that fill the week: performance, planning, communication, decisions, projects and stakeholders.
- [The Workshop Facilitator Kit](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/workshop-facilitator-kit): An agenda generator and template kit for running workshops that work: pick the type, length and group size, and get a structured plan you can export and use.
- [5 Organisational Competencies That Change How AI Gets Used](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/the-five-organisational-competencies): If AI capability is a design problem, what are you designing? Five organisational competencies that determine whether AI fluency compounds or concentrates.
- [What It Takes to Build AI Capability in an Organisation](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/what-it-takes-to-build-ai-capability): Training programmes alone don't build AI capability. The research points to the same answer: it's an organisational design problem, not a skills one.
- [Silver Cross: a career copilot for Learning at Work Week](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/silver-cross-career-copilot): How I turned a generic Learn Copilot session for Silver Cross into a hands-on hour where every person built their own AI career development plan.
- [The Small Business AI Prompt Pack](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/small-business-ai-prompt-pack): Over 80 practical AI prompts for small business owners, covering the nine areas that eat your week: hiring, onboarding, operations, marketing and admin.
- [The L&D AI Prompt Pack](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ld-ai-prompt-pack): 130 prompts for learning and development teams who want to use AI well, organised around the 13 jobs L&D really does, from needs analysis to evaluation.
- [Your employees are already vibe coding. Now what?](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/stay-safe-when-vibe-coding): Your staff are shipping live apps without IT knowing. Security specialist Kit Barker explains what organisations should do before the blast radius expands.
- [Vibe Coding for Non-Developers: Build a Working Prototype](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/vibe-coding-for-non-developers): Not where to start with AI tools: a practical answer to what you actually do when you've got something in your head and want to find out whether it's possible.
- [What vibe coding looks like when you have a mortgage to pay](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-vibe-code): Not the polished YouTube version. The version where you're 17,000 lines of code deep, six weeks in, not entirely sure this isn't a complete waste of time.
- [The Feedback Dilemma](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/the-feedback-dilemma): An interactive scenario that lets managers practise giving difficult feedback and see where it goes wrong, built on the Situation, Behaviour, Impact model.
- [The UK Government's AI Skills Hub: a £4.1m miss](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-skills-hub-review): The UK Government's £4.1m AI Skills Hub mistakes a course library for capability. A review of where it fails, and what actually builds AI skills: practice, sequencing, design.
- [Why Microsoft Copilot Rollouts Stall at 20% Adoption](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/why-microsoft-copilot-adoption-fails): Microsoft Copilot rollouts keep stalling near 20% adoption. The pattern is predictable, and it is not the tech: the missing piece is the adoption system around the tool.
- [T-Shaped Skills: How to Future-Proof Your Career for AI](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/t-shaped-skills-age-of-ai): Early-career workers in AI-exposed roles are already seeing double-digit declines. A practical guide to a T-shaped career that can survive automation.
- [I Let AI Agents Run My Business for Two Weeks](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/i-let-ai-agents-run-my-business): A hands-on review of an agentic AI platform across a consultancy. The gap between the promise of autonomous AI teams and what the technology can do.
- [The Age of Agentic AI: What It Means for Your Job](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/the-age-of-the-agentic): The shift from generative AI to agentic AI is moving technology from the passenger seat to the driver's seat. What that means for jobs and careers in 2026.
- [How to Use AI to Set Better Team Goals with OKRs](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-okrs-better-team-goals): AI is great at generating goal ideas and terrible at helping you choose. Here is a process for using the OKR framework to turn AI chaos into a working strategy.
- [The Decline of the Knowledge Worker](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/the-decline-of-the-knowledge-worker): White-collar roles that defined 'professional' careers for fifty years are now most exposed to AI disruption, while skilled trades boom. A structural shift.
- [How to Use AI to Process Your Annual Performance Review](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/ai-process-performance-review): Most people read their annual review for validation. Here is a Feedback Matrix and six AI prompts that turn vague performance feedback into self-knowledge.
- [The Year I Thought I Knew How Change Worked](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/the-year-i-thought-i-knew-change): Twenty years teaching change management, then 2025 forced me to actually live it. What I learned the hard way about adaptation, uncertainty, and being useful.
- [How I Make $500 an Hour Writing (And How You Can Too)](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-i-make-500-an-hour-writing): I invoiced $520 for a 2,600-word article last week. Total time: under an hour. Here is the system that makes it possible, and why expertise is the whole point.
- [Career Optionality: How to Stop Depending on One Employer](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/building-your-escape-velocity): Organizational resilience training teaches you to absorb your employer's decisions. This framework helps you build capability and independence to make your own.
- [Your AI Shadow: How to Make Behavioral Change Actually Stick](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/your-ai-shadow-behavioral-change): Most coaching investment disappears in the gap between a good session and doing things differently. Here is a prompt-based system to close that gap.
- [How to Build Crappy Chatbots](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/how-to-build-crappy-chatbots): We're not failing at AI adoption because the tools are wrong. We're using them to make broken systems run faster. That's a different problem entirely.
- [How to Make Your Best Work Visible to Leadership](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/make-one-capability-visible): Defensible capabilities only protect you if the right people know you have them. Here is a system for making your most valuable work visible before it matters.
- [The AI Resilience Audit: Which Parts of Your Job Are Safe?](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/the-ai-resilience-audit): A three-axis framework to assess which of your capabilities are genuinely safe from automation and which are already being evaluated for replacement.
- [Why Your Company Wants You to Be More Resilient](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/why-your-company-wants-you-resilient): Resilience training shifts the cost of organizational change onto individuals. Here's what to do instead: map your dependencies and build a backup plan.
- [We Could Use AI to Make Everyone a Genius](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/we-could-use-ai-to-make-everyone-a-genius): AI is being sold as augmentation. But amplification, making people capable of things they couldn't do before, is the harder question nobody's asking.
- [10 Real-Life AI Horror Stories That Actually Happened](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/10-real-life-ai-horror-stories): From a fabricated government report, ten real AI failures that happened in 2025, each revealing the same pattern: deploy first, ask questions later.
- [Hands-On with Firebase Studio, Google's Vibe Coding Tool](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/googles-new-vibe-coding-tool): I used Firebase Studio to build a storyboard generator mapped to Rise 360 blocks. What I learned says a lot about how to get useful output from AI coding tools.
- [How to Create a Personal Development Plan with ChatGPT](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/personal-development-plan-with-chatgpt): A step-by-step process for building a real, market-aligned 6-month PDP using ChatGPT: from job market research through gap analysis to a progress tracker.
- [Can AI Make HR More Human?](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/can-ai-make-hr-more-human): AI is already inside HR operations across the UK. The opportunity: using automation to free people professionals for the work that actually matters.
- [How to Use AI for Your Own Professional Development](https://thehumanco.org/ai-resources/learning-in-the-ai-era): AI is democratising the kind of strategic, personalised coaching once reserved for senior executives. Here's how to use it for your own career development.