A residential construction company ran a well-attended AI hackathon where employees built prototype tools for scheduling. Enthusiasm was high during the event, but three months later, almost no one is using AI tools in daily work. What is the most likely gap in the company's workforce-development approach?

A single hackathon can spark real enthusiasm and even real skill-building in the moment, but without follow-through — ongoing training, support, or integration into daily workflows — that momentum has nowhere to go once the event ends, which is exactly the gap the scenario describes. Claiming employees lacked the technical skill to benefit doesn't fit an exam and workforce-development approach built for a non-technical business audience, and nothing in the scenario points to a skill shortfall; attendees built working prototypes, which argues against a skills gap. Concluding the hackathon should have used lectures instead of hands-on building reverses a well-supported principle — applied, hands-on formats generally build more durable literacy than lecture-only training, so swapping to lectures would likely make the retention problem worse, not better. Making participation mandatory addresses who showed up, not what happened after the event, and attendance was already described as strong — the described failure is about sustaining behavior afterward, not initial turnout. The operating principle: enthusiasm generated by a single event fades without a deliberate plan to carry it into daily work. Operational check: for any training or hackathon, ask what happens on day two — is there a next step already built in, or does the event stand alone?