Gartner: 65% of Employees are Excited to use AI at Work

Sixty-five percent of employees said they are excited about using AI at work, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

While C-suite executives often attribute AI’s lack of added business value to workforce resistance to adopting AI tools, that might not be the case. According to a Gartner survey of 2,986 employees in July 2025, 37% of employees do not use AI even though they can because their co-workers are not using it. Gartner research indicates that the root issue is often executive urgency leading to rushed implementations of AI with insufficient consideration of workforce implications.

“Often AI deployment decisions are being made without any involvement of HR,” said Eser Rizagolu, Senior Director, Analyst Gartner HR Practice. “This leads to poor adoption, misaligned expectations between employees and executives, and ultimately, organizations not realizing significant business value from AI.”

To gain the desired value from AI investments, Gartner recommends that companies reframe AI governance to focus not only on compliance and information security, but also on planning for impacts on the employee experience. The market researcher also recommends that companies identify digitally curious and collaborative employees to pilot AI tools with and target for AI learning. Finally, Gartner recommends that employees be segmented by their attitudes and behaviors toward AI to craft personalized learning journeys that create a culture with AI-forward work behaviors.

To avoid negative impacts of AI on the employee experience, managers need to collaborate with digital workplace, security, legal, and business units within enterprise-wide AI governance teams, according to Gartner.

“To convince the C-suite of HR’s critical role in AI governance, leaders should position AI as a workforce issue and communicate HR’s ability to detect risks while serving as a partner that ensures AI tools drive productivity, engagement, and retention,” said Rizagolu.

After AI use cases have been properly stress-tested and meet the requirements of the governance team and organizational value needs, they are ready to be scaled across the organization, and then further analyzed through employee surveys.

Gartner clients can read more in the report: “3 CHRO Actions to Reframe AI Deployment for Enhanced Impact.”

Channel Impact^®
Channel partners should look to their teams to determine who among their staff are best suited to helping customers with this transition.