Artificial intelligence was once seen as a bottom-up workplace phenomenon, with employees eagerly experimenting with tools like ChatGPT and Claude—sometimes without company approval—to speed up routine tasks. But new data suggests that enthusiasm is fading. Across corporate offices worldwide, a growing number of white-collar workers are now resisting employer-led AI rollouts, raising fresh questions about whether businesses can translate heavy AI spending into real productivity gains.
Employees Are Increasingly Avoiding Company AI Tools
A new global survey of 3,750 executives and employees across 14 countries, conducted by SAP subsidiary WalkMe for its fifth annual State of Digital Adoption report, found that 54% of workers bypassed their company’s AI tools in the past 30 days and completed tasks manually instead.
Another 33% reported not using AI at all.
Taken together, that means roughly 80% of enterprise employees are either avoiding or actively rejecting workplace AI systems—even as companies sharply increase spending on the technology.
The report found that average digital transformation budgets rose 38% year over year to $54.2 million, but about 40% of that spending has underperformed because of adoption failures.
Executives and Workers Have Vastly Different Views on AI Readiness
The findings point to a sharp disconnect between management and employees over how prepared organizations really are for AI adoption.
Only 9% of workers said they trust AI for complex, business-critical decisions, compared with 61% of executives—a 52-point gap.
Similarly, 88% of executives believe employees have the tools they need to succeed with AI, while just 21% of workers agree.
WalkMe described the divide as evidence that executives and employees are effectively “describing fundamentally different companies.”
Economists and Analysts Question AI’s Productivity Impact
Some economists argue the skepticism among workers reflects broader doubts about whether AI has delivered on its promises.
Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, recently told Fortune that despite widespread experimentation with AI, the technology has not yet produced the productivity gains many proponents forecast.
“AI didn’t deliver,” Hanke said. “You look at all the surveys and, yes, everybody’s using it a little bit, but you dig into it and it hasn’t done much.”
He added that if AI were producing transformative results, U.S. productivity data would likely show stronger improvement than it has so far.
Why Workers Are Struggling With AI Adoption
Industry leaders say the issue may be less about employee resistance and more about implementation failures.
Dan Adika, CEO and co-founder of WalkMe, said many organizations are rolling out powerful AI systems without giving workers the training, context, or infrastructure needed to use them effectively.
Adika compared the situation to giving employees a Ferrari without teaching them how to drive it.
“They don’t have the AI skills,” he said, noting that many workers lack prompt-writing knowledge, organizational context, or the technical systems required to integrate AI into daily workflows.
Brad Brown, Global Head of Tax Technology & Innovation for KPMG in the United States, offered a similar analogy, comparing AI tools to a Formula 1 race car: highly capable, but ineffective without a skilled operator.
The repeated comparison from senior technology leaders suggests a common conclusion across industries: many companies have invested in AI tools faster than they have prepared employees to use them.
The Productivity Cost of Failed AI Rollouts
The consequences are increasingly measurable.
WalkMe found that employees lose the equivalent of 51 working days per year to technology friction—nearly two full months of productivity—up 42% from 2025. That translates to roughly 7.9 hours per week spent dealing with inefficient or difficult workplace technology.
Meanwhile, economists at Goldman Sachs reported this week that workers who use AI effectively save an average of 40 to 60 minutes per day.
The contrast underscores a growing divide inside organizations: for employees who understand how to use AI well, the technology can meaningfully improve efficiency; for those who do not, it may create as much friction as it removes.
Companies Face a Growing AI Adoption Challenge
As corporate America and multinational employers continue pouring billions into artificial intelligence, the latest data suggests that deployment alone is not enough.
Without stronger training, clearer workflows, and better integration into day-to-day operations, companies risk spending heavily on tools employees neither trust nor use.
The early era of “shadow AI,” when workers quietly adopted AI on their own, may be giving way to a more complicated reality: widespread workplace resistance to AI that feels imposed from the top down.
For businesses betting on AI to drive the next wave of productivity growth, the challenge is no longer just buying the technology—it is persuading employees that it is worth using.
