Global study of 1,100 business leaders reveals only 23% say their workforce is ready for AI – declining 6 points from 2025
NEW YORK, June 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services, today announced the release of its second annual People Readiness Report, a global study of 1,100 senior business and technology leaders across eight countries, revealing a notable drop in workforce AI readiness and a widening gap between AI expectations and execution.
The report illustrates what leaders are doing right to ride the AI surge, and that AI success is not driven solely by different strategies, use cases or technologies – it’s driven by whether organizations redesign work and manage those changes throughout their organizations. The data also shows that trust in AI can be built through deliberate operating model and governance changes.
The findings come as companies accelerate AI adoption and invest heavily to realize value at scale. “Worldwide spending on AI is forecast to total $2.52 trillion in 2026, a 44% increase year-over-year, according to Gartner®, Inc., a business and technology insights company.”
“This is a critical moment for global enterprises as they race to adopt AI, redesign workflows and pursue innovation, yet they’re finding that their greatest assets – their people – need more attention,” said Kim Basile, CIO, Kyndryl. “The data shows that the organizations investing in people – whether it’s rethinking roles and workflows, dedicating resources for upskilling and retraining, or guiding employees through change – are experiencing positive outcomes at a much higher rate.”
“AI’s ability to reshape work is challenging organizations to reshape their workforce more rapidly than ever before,” said Mark Paulek, Chief Human Resources Officer, Kyndryl. “The leaders pulling ahead are aligning skills, roles and decision-making with how work is actually changing. When people understand their role in that system, trust and performance scale together.”
According to the study:
- 57% say AI is embedded in core business processes or deployed broadly across the enterprise; last year, 35% said AI was fully integrated across their organizations.
- Only 32% have achieved at least one of their top two AI goals; just 11% have achieved both.
The study identifies a Pacesetters group, the 9% of organizations that have done three things: they redesign roles around AI, implement change management so the workforce understands its new operating model and has guardrails in place, and have built workforce readiness. These three behaviors are the operational foundations that consistently distinguish the organizations achieving the strongest results from AI. As they do these things, at each stage they are building the important governance frameworks. Pacesetters are roughly twice as likely to have fully implemented every governance dimension measured.
Pacesetters are:
- 1.5 times more likely to achieve AI-related revenue growth.
- 1.6 times more likely to report better innovation for products and services.
Business leaders consistently rank workforce readiness among the most challenging aspects of AI adoption:
- Just 23% of organizations think their workforces are fully ready for AI, a six-point drop from last year.
- And 79% agree that the speed of AI will outpace their organizations’ workforce, governance and operating models.
The risk of falling behind is increasing as more organizations adopt autonomous AI agents.
- 81% of organizations expect AI agents to make impactful decisions for their organizations within the next year, but today just 25% completely trust AI systems operating without human oversight.
Readying Workforces for AI-enabled Workplaces
The report identifies actions that organizations are taking to get their workforces ready for an AI-enabled workplace:
- Redesigning roles for the future: 61% say their organizations have already redesigned roles, and 24% are creating new roles focused on AI management.
- Addressing skills gaps: Half of leaders (52%) say it has become more challenging to find employees with the right skills to advance their AI strategy, and a third have fully implemented training programs focused on helping employees effectively collaborate with AI tools.
- Building trust through governance: A third of organizations (33%) claim they have clear policies on which decisions AI can and can’t make, and 27% are using a registry and monitoring capabilities for all their AI systems. Organizations with stronger governance assert their workforces trust more in AI strategy and execution, and high-trust organizations are significantly more likely to report transformative outcomes from their AI investments.
Learn more about People Readiness.
*Gartner Press Release, Gartner Says Worldwide AI Spending Will Total $2.5 Trillion in 2026, 15 January 2026. GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
About Kyndryl
Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services offering advisory, implementation and managed services to thousands of customers in more than 60 countries. As the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, the Company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex information systems that the world depends on every day. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com.
Kyndryl Press Contact
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