A global Adecco Group study of 2,000 c-suite executives across 13 countries finds that organisations are accelerating AI adoption, but many lack the leadership clarity, workforce trust and capability-building needed to turn adoption into measurable results. Respondents oversee more than 8.6 million workers, offering a senior leadership view on how AI is reshaping strategy, skills and organisational readiness.
The report, The human premium: Leadership beyond the algorithm, shows that 45% of business leaders expect AI agents to be integrated into workflows within the next 12 months. Yet only 36% say their talent strategy clearly demonstrates that AI will create opportunities for employees, pointing to a widening gap between AI ambition and workforce readiness.
“AI may move at software speed, but organisational trust moves at human speed,” said Denis Machuel, CEO of the Adecco Group. “Companies that ignore that gap will struggle to turn pilots into performance. The winners will be those that pair technology with transparency, accountability and a clear path for people to adapt. Business leaders have a fundamental responsibility to ensure people and technology can work in harmony.”
The research highlights a disconnect between leadership expectations and organisational preparedness. While 45% of business leaders expect AI agents in workflows within a year, only 30% of workers say the same. At the same time, 70% of workers feel ready to collaborate with AI agents, compared with 39% of leaders who believe employees would be comfortable. This suggests that workforce readiness may be stronger than leaders assume, while communication and alignment lag behind adoption.
AI agents also emerge in the report as the dominant new megatrend affecting companies today and over the next five years, underlining how quickly the issue has moved from experimentation to board-level priority.
The findings indicate that the challenge is not simply technology investment. Only 22% of leaders say they are highly confident their organisations are developing the digital and future-ready capabilities needed to keep pace with change. Only 31% say leadership has sufficient AI skills and knowledge to understand the risks and opportunities. Only 36% say their talent strategy clearly demonstrates that AI will create opportunities for workers, not replace them, and only 39% are involving employees directly in job redesign.
Taken together, the results suggest that many organisations are still not communicating clearly enough about how AI will affect roles, careers and value creation. For boards and CEOs, that makes AI adoption a leadership, governance and talent issue as much as a technology one.
The report identifies a minority group of future-ready organisations: human-centric, tech-enabled enterprises that are extracting strategic value from AI. Although the share of companies that meet this definition has fallen by four percentage points over the past year, these organisations provide a clearer playbook for execution as companies move from AI hype to implementation.
Among future-ready organisations, 49% report a mature approach to measuring workforce trust, compared with 18% of other organisations. They are also far more likely to report a highly adaptable workforce, at 76% versus 42% elsewhere. The findings suggest that organisations that measure trust systematically are better positioned to align people and technology strategies, strengthen adaptability and capture more value from AI.
The report recommends three priorities for leaders: communicate a clear AI roadmap that explains how technology supports business priorities and creates opportunity for employees; engage workers early to understand how roles, skills and career paths will evolve; and use workforce data, transparent governance and targeted skills investment to strengthen trust and adaptability.
