Vendasta wins 2026 Lattice People Success Award for AI culture

Vendasta won Lattice’s 2026 People + AI Pioneer Award and received an honorable mention from the Josh Bersin Company for an AI operating model built through People Operations. The company says the approach has lifted AI literacy to 78% and reclaimed more than 20,000 work hours so far.

Why it matters: - Vendasta’s recognition signals that AI adoption is increasingly being judged as an organizational culture challenge, not just a software purchase. - The awards also put a spotlight on a practical workplace model: train employees to build with AI, make usage visible, and move support closer to the people doing the work. - Vendasta says the approach has already produced measurable gains in AI literacy and time savings.

What happened: - Vendasta won Lattice’s 2026 People + AI Pioneer Award. - Vendasta also earned an honorable mention at the Josh Bersin Company’s HR Pacesetter Awards. - Both recognitions were announced at the Irresistible 2026 conference in Los Angeles. - Vendasta is the AI workforce platform for small and medium businesses. - The company is based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

The details: - Vendasta built an AI operating model inside People Operations. - The company renamed its Director of Learning role to Director of AI Business Enablement. - A Citizen Developer program trains employees who are already experimenting with AI and sends them back to their departments as internal champions. - Vendasta tracks every AI tool, agent and workflow on an internal build board, along with what each one does and how many hours it saves. - Employees across functions post builds, including executive assistants, HR team members, marketing strategists and engineers. - Weekly demos give employees a forum to show what they built and to share failures openly. - Vendasta’s AI literacy has risen from 65% to 78% since the company launched its AI literacy journey. - Nearly 10% of employees are now certified AI workflow builders. - Vendasta says it has reclaimed more than 20,000 work hours to date and is tracking toward 300,000 hours by the end of 2026. - The company’s internal AI employee, Pepper, answers HR questions around the clock across 12 countries. - Pepper handles benefits by country, letters of employment and policy clarifications. - The HR coordinator who previously handled those questions now manages Pepper and builds other AI-enabled systems. - Vendasta says its global partner network includes more than 60,000 partners. - Vendasta says its AI Employees execute marketing, sales and operations work automatically.

Between the lines: - Vendasta’s recognition suggests AI maturity is increasingly tied to employee behavior, manager support and visible executive participation. - Jean Parchewsky, Vendasta’s chief people officer, framed the challenge as cultural rather than technical, arguing that tools change quickly but adoption depends on whether teams feel safe experimenting. - The company’s “M-shaped worker” approach reflects a broader bet that AI can free employees to build depth in multiple areas instead of staying locked into one specialty. - The awards also validate the idea that People Operations can act as a center of AI enablement, not just a support function.

What’s next: - Vendasta is tracking toward reclaiming 300,000 work hours by the end of 2026. - The company is continuing to expand its AI literacy program and internal builder network. - Its model appears designed to push more routine work into AI systems while shifting employees toward higher-value, cross-functional work.

The bottom line: - Vendasta’s awards point to a simple but growing lesson for employers: the fastest AI adopters are the ones building a culture that rewards experimentation and makes AI use part of everyday work.