Kyndryl 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.”
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.
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Kyndryl Report: AI adoption accelerates as workforce readiness becomes the ROI difference maker
Kyndryl 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.”
According to the study:
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:
Business leaders consistently rank workforce readiness among the most challenging aspects of AI adoption:
The risk of falling behind is increasing as more organizations adopt autonomous AI agents.
Readying workforces for AI-enabled workplaces
The report identifies actions that organizations are taking to get their workforces ready for an AI-enabled workplace:
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.
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This entry was posted on June 25, 2026 at 10:59 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Kyndryl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.