From London: The global corporate AI investment boom is encountering a frustratingly familiar obstacle. Companies have purchased the technology, installed the tools, and briefed executives on promised productivity gains. But the people who actually use these systems each day are not always along for the ride.
A July 2025 survey of 2,986 employees revealed that 46% of managers are experimenting with AI to improve their work, compared to only 26% of employees. More strikingly, just 14% of managers said they do not face any challenges in driving effective use of AI across their team. This gap between management enthusiasm and workforce uptake points to a systematic failure in how organisations are approaching AI deployment.
Gartner's analysis places the blame squarely on a missing actor: the human resources function. AI deployment decisions are often being made without any involvement of HR, according to researchers. The result is predictable. Rushed implementations of AI with insufficient consideration of workforce implications lead to poor adoption and misaligned expectations between employees and executives. From a governance standpoint, this represents a failure of institutional accountability. Organisations are spending money without adequate planning for the human side of change.
The challenge is not fundamentally about worker hostility to innovation. A Gartner survey found that 65% of workers are excited about using AI at work, challenging a common narrative among senior executives that employee resistance is the primary reason AI investments fail to deliver business value. Instead, 37% of employees said they do not use AI tools even when they are available because their colleagues are not using them. This reveals a coordination problem rather than ideological rejection of the technology.
The counterargument has merit. Employee concerns about job security are not trivial. A 2024 EY survey reveals 75% of employees worry AI could eliminate jobs, with 65% fearing for their own roles. When organisations ask workers to test tools and provide feedback without clear communication about their future roles, a Microsoft and LinkedIn study noted that the majority of people who use AI at work (53%) worry that using it on important work tasks makes them look replaceable. These are legitimate anxieties that deserve serious engagement, not dismissal.
Gartner points to three practical gaps that HR leaders must address. First, managers need clearer direction on how to support their teams through the transition. Managers must be cognizant of the operational and emotional resistance AI transformation can trigger among employees, finding a balance to ensure they don't lose trust while translating the benefits executives desire. Second, organisations remain confused about what workers should do with time freed by AI. A July 2025 survey of 114 HR leaders found that just 7% of organisations provide guidelines on how to use time saved by AI. Third, there is misalignment on redeployment. 55% of HR leaders would like employees to redeploy freed time to work on special projects outside their core job, while only 28% of managers would prioritise this activity.
The pragmatic path forward acknowledges that both business ambition and employee wellbeing matter. Organisations pursuing AI need to accept that technological capability is only one piece of the puzzle. Managers play a central role in illustrating the relevance of AI to their teams, guiding them in using the tools effectively and making it a meaningful factor in performance. This requires adequate resourcing for change management, transparent communication about future roles, and involvement of HR professionals from the start.
For Australian business leaders watching global trends, the lesson is clear. The companies extracting genuine value from AI investments are not those moving fastest technically. They are the ones who treat workforce transformation with the same rigour as technology implementation. That requires money, time, and honest conversation. Skip that work, and even the best AI systems will sit unused on company servers while employees wait for clearer direction about their own futures.