Introduction to using AI tools for social service organisations | online workshop - 20 October 2026

This two-hour introductory workshop giving you the confidence and practical skills to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in your day-to-day mahi.

Facilitated by Mosaic Partners, the workshop offers an engaging, interactive and practical, without being overly technical, exploration of insights, tools (like ChatGPT, MS Copilot and Claude), and new features from the world of AI.

It’s suitable for people who have little or no experience with AI tools and want to learn the basics, through to those who use these already and want to develop their skills.  With interactive activities and scenarios tailored for our members and relevant to the social service sector, the content will outline areas specific to your mahi and roles that would be most useful to learn about.

Participants will:

• Explore responsible and secure AI use, with a focus on privacy, bias, and organisational safeguards

• Gain confidence engaging with ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude, including tasks such as:

  • distilling long emails, transcripts, or reports into clear insights

  • analysing data for insights;

  • generating images for marketing and communications;

  • developing formulas within Excel

• Apply a practical prompting toolkit to cut admin time each week

The two-hour workshop will cover:

• Foundations: What generative AI is, where it gets things right (and wrong), core concepts, and guardrails.

• Prompt Craft: Techniques for structured prompting, iterating, and controlling tone and accuracy.

• Interactive Tasks: Real workplace scenarios with guided challenges and shared learning.

• Level Up: A look at working with files and more advanced uses.

Facilitator:

Simon Collinson from AI training specialists Mosaic Partners will facilitate this workshop.

Simon spent over a decade helping people through big organisational change, coaching leaders and frontline teams through moments that mattered, always focused on the human side, not just the process.

These days, through Mosaic Partners, Simon helps people use AI in ways that actually make sense for their day-to-day work. He's not interested in hype or turning people into tech experts, he's interested in giving time back to the people doing the real work, so there's more capacity for what matters most, the people you're there to support.

Simon runs practical, down-to-earth workshops that meet people where they're at, whether that's cautious, curious, or completely new to AI, and helps them leave with confidence, not just information.

Registration information:

A credit card payment charge will apply.  If for any reason you are not able to use this payment method, please get in touch with us at office@sspa.org.nz to discuss.

We require a minimum number of participants for the workshop to go ahead. We will send registrants a booking confirmation one week before the workshop date. If the workshop cannot go ahead, we will offer you a postponement date or a full refund.

Registrations can be transferred to another colleague in your organisation at any time prior to the workshop by contacting learning@sspa.org.nz

See Refund Policy for registration cancellation information.