85% of employees are encouraged to use AI but 42% don’t know why, finds Culture Amp

More than four in five (85%) of employees say their organisation actively encourages exploration and experimentation with AI yet 42% don’t know why they should be using it in the first place.

This is one of the findings from the inaugural ‘How Employees Really Feel About AI at Work’ benchmark from Culture Amp, a leading employee experience and performance platform, which suggests AI uptake is outpacing company leaders’ ability to guide its use for better innovation, productivity and competitive edge.

Only 58% of employees say their leaders have clearly explained how AI will be used to reach their company’s goals and the figure is much the same at a day-to-day work level too, with just 60% saying their managers share examples of how AI can support employees with their goals or workflows.

Despite this disconnect, employees clearly feel the benefit of AI. Across the 112,000 survey respondents from 123 organisations globally, 71% say AI tools make them feel more productive, rising to 93% among ‘power users’ (AI’s heaviest adopters).

Power users don’t  just feel more productive — they're more motivated: 72% of the heaviest AI users say their organisation motivates them to go beyond what they would in a similar role elsewhere, compared with 57% of non-users.

But the sense of added motivation and productivity doesn’t necessarily translate into lighter workloads: 72% of power users say their workload is reasonable for their role, compared with 69% of non-users, a difference of just three points.

Culture Amp went on to find that employees are adopting AI with their eyes open, with 86% understanding the risks associated with using the technology in their work. That awareness rises steadily with usage, from 67% among non-users to 95% among power users.

What employees have even less clarity on is what AI means for their future prospects at their organisation. Awareness of internal career opportunities has fallen 10 percentage points since July 2025, the largest single-year change in the benchmark data set. At the same time, satisfaction with career development remains at 66%, a number that’s held steady in Culture Amp engagement benchmark findings since 2021.

“Employees are telling us they understand the risks, they are using the tools, and they feel more productive,” says Amy Lavoie, VP of People Science at Culture Amp. “That is not a workforce resisting change. That is a workforce that has done its part and is waiting on leadership to do theirs.”

“We do not know with certainty which roles AI reshapes, which skills hold their value, or what a career path looks like three years out. As a result, leaders may go quiet, because saying nothing feels safer than saying something that turns out to be wrong. The most useful thing a leader can do right now is admit the plan is unfinished, and then keep talking anyway. Certainty is not what employees need from you right now. Candour is."

Read more about Culture Amp’s AI at Work Benchmark in our blog post.

About the Data: This analysis draws on 342 surveys run by 292 organizations on the Culture Amp platform, representing approximately 112,000 employees and 343,000 individual responses, collected in the 12 months to July 2026. Data comes from Culture Amp's AI Effectiveness survey template, alongside standard engagement survey items.

Respondents span all major regions, with the largest groups in North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. Organizations range from under 100 employees to more than 5,000, concentrated most heavily in the 1,000 to 5,000 range. Respondents work across 16 industries, most numerous in technology, professional services, and education. Individual contributors account for roughly two-thirds of the sample, with the remainder spread across manager, director, VP, and C-suite levels.

Employees are grouped by how intensively they use AI at work, standardized into four comparable groups: power users, daily users, light users, and non-users. Career opportunity awareness and career progress figures come from Culture Amp's wider engagement benchmark, a larger population than the AI survey sample; because AI survey participation is voluntary, these organizations likely run ahead of the wider market on AI adoption, so the figures describe AI-engaged organizations rather than all employers.