Employee AI optimism lost to an AI leadership void

Company executives are more bullish about AI than their employees, with most workers complaining about a lack of comprehensive training and clear AI roadmaps, according to a recent survey.

Executives are 15% more likely to say AI has had a significant positive impact on their companies than their employees are, with only one in three workers saying they’re prepared to adapt to changes prompted by AI, according to the survey commissioned by Google Workspace. The new survey reflects an earlier study by agentic AI provider Writer, which found executives more excited about their AI rollouts than their employees were.

While 61% of employees surveyed say they use AI daily, more than four in five wish their organizations would focus more on the technology, the new survey finds.

“One in three don’t feel prepared because of the failures of leadership,” says Derek Snyder, director of product marketing at Google Workspace. “Employees see the hype, but they’re skeptical or dubious that they’re going to be able to get real things done and that this isn’t just going to slow them down.”

A major problem is a lack of AI training for employees, Snyder adds, with many employees confused about the options for AI tools.

“Employees are uncertain which tools they should use, and they feel really paralyzed by this,” he says. “They hear a lot about this tool and that tool, but they don’t know what they should actually use and for what task.”

A lack of maturity

The survey also suggests that executives’ optimism about AI not only exceeds employee views but also outpaces their companies’ actual AI maturity.

Google Workspace, using several metrics collected in the survey, calculated that only 3% of the companies represented have been highly transformed by AI. Nearly three-quarters of the companies represented are in the early stages of AI transformation.

The new survey echoes the results of another recent survey from AIOps observability provider Riverbed, which found that a huge majority of technical specialists and business and IT leaders believe their organizations will meet their AI expectations, despite only 12% currently having AI in enterprise-wide production.

Companies highly transformed by AI tend to have evangelists of the technology that span across all functions of the business, instead of being concentrated in a specialized AI team, Snyder says. These organizations also have strong executive buy-in, with leaders often telling employees how they’re using AI to make their lives easier.

“Executives will talk in all-hands meetings about how people in the organization, or they themselves, were able to get something done with AI that they fundamentally could never do before,” he says. “It creates this permission structure, because there is still a set of employees who are like, ‘This feels a little like cheating.’”

Google Workspace also recommends that organizations create transparent AI roadmaps that can be continuously refined. Companies also should identify and prioritize quick AI wins that demonstrate value.

Leaders needed

Other AI experts also see a need for more leadership in pointing employees and organizations toward AI wins.

HR services provider BambooHR, in its own research, has found that less than a third of employees have access to formal AI training, says Alan Whitaker, head of AI at the company.

He compares an AI rollout to the complexity of a CRM implementation, with a need to think through processes and data architecture — and to roll out extensive training.

“AI requires that same methodical approach, maybe more, because it touches every aspect of how people work,” Whitaker says. “If you just buy a tool and have everyone install it and try to figure it out, the results and investment will be uneven, ineffective, and messy.”

Whitaker isn’t surprised that executives are more optimistic about AI than their employees are. Executives see the potential to transform business models, create new revenue streams, and solve sticky problems, he says, while employees focus on the near term.

“Executives expect revenue growth from gen AI but don’t offer clear paths to get there,” he explains. “Employees have deliverables due, clients to serve, and KPIs to hit, all while being asked to learn a fundamentally new way of working. And they’re not seeing enough realistic, practical examples that make them confident about using AI in their daily work.”

There’s a natural difference between executive and employee attitudes about AI, agrees Jean-Philippe Avelange, CIO at managed cloud connectivity provider Expereo.

Executives look at AI through a portfolio lens, including efficiency gains, customer experience improvements, and the ability to modernize operations, he says.

“On the other hand, employees experience AI far more personally,” Avelange adds. “Uncertainty about skills, changing workflows, and job impact naturally creates this caution.”

While a gap in optimism isn’t surprising, it is solvable, he says. “The solution lies in transparency, practical upskilling programs, and showing teams exactly how AI augments rather than replaces their work,” he adds. “When employees understand the safeguards and see tangible benefits, optimism grows.”

Research by Yooz, a provider of automated financial processes, echoes the results from the Google Workspace survey. The Yooz 2025 Workplace Tech Resistance Report, released earlier this year, found that nearly half of all works feel excluded from AI adoptions, says Laurent Charpentier, CEO of the company.

“When people are left out, they hesitate, resist, or avoid using new tools altogether,” he says. “AI readiness isn’t about access to software. It is about communication, training, and showing employees how these tools remove manual friction rather than threaten their roles.”