6 Employee Critiques About Their Companies’ AI Practices

A call for AI leadership

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The verdict is in: employees are not happy with the way artificial intelligence is being percolated through their organizations and into their jobs. In fact, they even see those executives or managers leading AI as either clueless or incompetent.

That’s the word from a new survey by Roloff Consulting, which finds rising discontentment among the ranks when it comes to AI. Close to eight in 10 employees, 77%, describe feeling “skeptical, overwhelmed, or scared” with the AI activity taking place within their enterprises.

Close to half, 45%, say AI has created more work, not less. “AI outputs require extensive validation,” the study’s authors point out. “Different teams are using the tools differently, creating inconsistency and rework. And because organizations haven’t redesigned workflows to meaningfully integrate AI, people are doing their original jobs plus the new AI-adjacent tasks on top.”

Interestingly, there is no daylight between the feelings of executives and staff employees toward AI. Both groups are feeling pressure at exactly the same rate: 55% of respondents across both groups report urgency to adopt AI, rating it a 4 or 5 out of 5.

At the same time, 71% feel their company’s AI strategy is either reactive or non-existent. It appears, at least in employees’ views, AI may be either leaderless or in the wrong hands. Only 7% felt their company’s AI efforts were in the right hands. The majority, 61%, said “the wrong people are definitely leading it,” and 33% had no idea who was leading it.

“Respondents weren’t just expressing frustration at being excluded,” the report’s authors said. “When decisions are made without the knowledge of the people closest to the work, and those decisions create more burden instead of less, trust erodes. And eroded trust is very hard to rebuild.”

Training is often the best antidote for discontent and skepticism, but many business leaders don’t seem have gotten the…

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