Kyndryl, a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services, announced the release of its second annual People Readiness Report. According to the global survey of 1,100 corporate technology and business leaders across eight countries, while rapid growth is being witnessed in corporate AI adoption, it has also been observed that a reduction in workforce readiness has become a significant bottleneck impeding ROI.
The research comes at a time when an enormous amount of investment is being made in technology, with the global spend on artificial intelligence estimated to reach $2.52 trillion by 2026—an increase of 44% over the previous year, as per data from Gartner, Inc. It has become evident from the report that success in artificial intelligence goes beyond strategy and technology alone. Instead, the ultimate difference-maker is whether organizations actively redesign workflows and manage those operating changes across their workforce.
“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 of 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.”
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Navigating the AI Execution Gap and Declining Readiness
The study highlights a sharp acceleration in implementation, with 57% of leaders stating that AI is now embedded in core business processes or deployed broadly across the enterprise—a substantial jump from the 35% who reported full integration last year. However, actual strategic execution has failed to keep pace with deployment density. Only 32% of corporations have achieved at least one of their top two AI goals, and a mere 11% have successfully accomplished both.
This execution gap is heavily tied to slipping workforce preparation:
The Readiness Drop: Just 23% of organizations believe their workforces are fully ready to leverage AI, marking a six-point decline from the previous year.
The Pace of Innovation: A staggering 79% of business leaders agree that the absolute speed of AI advancement will outpace their organization’s workforce capabilities, governance structures, and operating models.
The Autonomous Trust Deficit: The risk of falling behind is expanding as companies transition to autonomous AI systems. While 81% of organizations expect AI agents to make highly impactful corporate decisions within the next year, only 25% completely trust AI systems operating without human oversight.
The Three Operational Pillars of Industry Pacesetters
The report identifies an elite “Pacesetters” group comprising just 9% of surveyed organizations that consistently extract the strongest financial and operational results from their technology investments. This segment is 1.5 times more likely to achieve AI-related revenue growth and 1.6 times more likely to report superior innovation for products and services.
The analysis reveals that these top performers separate themselves by executing three distinct foundational behaviors: they deliberately redesign workforce roles around AI capabilities, implement structured change management frameworks so teams understand new operating models, and continuously build active workforce readiness.
“AI’s ability to reshape work is challenging organizations to reshape their workforce more rapidly than ever before,” added Mark Paulek, Chief Human Resources Officer at Kyndryl. “The leaders pulling ahead are aligning skills, roles and decision-making with how work is actually changing.”
The report also highlights that Pacesetters use these behaviors to build strong corporate governance systems. At present, 61% of top companies have changed operational roles and 24% are coming up with new posts devoted entirely to AI management. And, a third of companies (33%) have set up clear policies that define what AI decisions are allowed and which are not. Besides, 27% make use of specialized registries for ongoing monitoring of live systems.
The complete 2026 People Readiness Report, including localized country sub-reports, governance blueprints, and workforce training checklists, is available for public download. Chief information officers, human resource directors, and digital transformation executives can access the full study by visiting Kyndryl’s official digital research hub.
