Five insights on managers’ role in AI adoption

As Ann suggests, all of this highlights the need for continuous development in order to deliver on AI’s golden promises. 

“You cannot expect untrained leaders to oversee complex implementations and deliver real-world ROI,” Ann adds. “At best, you get haphazard, fragmented results. At worst, you get inertia and a workforce in dire need of the direction required to deliver the productivity boost that both your business and the wider UK economy desperately need.”

Here are five standout findings from the report: 

1. AI has people’s ears more than management does

Our report flags how 70% of staff are now turning to AI for workplace guidance ahead of their own managers. Why this shift? 

“Because they [AI tools] are offering faster, more detailed support than an untrained ‘accidental manager’ can provide,” says Ann, who describes the statistic as “staggering”, adding: “If that isn’t a wake-up call to professionalise your managers, I don’t know what is.”

The report also spotlights Anthony Impey MBE FCGI, CEO of Be the Business, who says the challenge for leaders is how to turn this ad hoc experimentation into structured, organisation-wide adoption.

“When businesses successfully embed AI into workflows, decision-making and operations, rather than leaving it as isolated individual use, the impact on performance and productivity can be transformational.”

2. Organisations are stuck in pilot purgatory

Our research highlights a striking tension at the heart of AI adoption: the gap between where businesses are today and where they demand to be tomorrow: 68% of organisations are still in the early stages of experimenting or building pilots. But the report also shows a way out. One multinational energy company escaped this “pilot purgatory” by implementing an AI-at-scale strategy, with a model that prioritised widespread deployment from the outset. It soon had nearly 100 use cases in production across internal operations and customer-facing products. The key: anchoring every AI initiative in clear business value.