Research firm Gartner warned on 13 May 2026 that by 2027, half of companies without a clear plan for supporting staff through AI adoption will lose their best AI-skilled employees to rivals who do it better. The warning is based on Gartner's Global Labour Market Survey, carried out in the first quarter of 2026, which questioned 12,004 employees and managers in 40 countries about how AI is changing their working lives.
The survey found that many bosses think giving staff access to AI tools counts as success, even when it hasn't actually changed how people do their jobs. Senior leaders are often just as unprepared: a separate Gartner survey of 197 executives in December 2025 found only 27% had a proper AI strategy in place, and just 20% believed their staff were genuinely ready to use AI well.
The survey also found a mismatch between what companies provide and what employees actually use. Eighty-eight per cent of staff given AI tools by their employer also use their own personal AI tools for work, often because they save time. Staff who use both types are 1.7 times more likely to say they save significant time compared with those using only company-provided tools — but Gartner warned this also raises the risk of data leaks and makes it more likely that skilled staff will leave. It recommended that IT and HR departments work together to improve company AI tools so staff don't feel the need to use their own instead.
The report also found that 73% of the highest-performing AI users are managers or executives.
Swagatam Basu, a senior analyst at Gartner, said leaders are "mistaking basic access or adoption metrics for transformation."