Dive Brief:
- As businesses pursue broader AI adoption, more than 2 in 3 workers say they are concerned about negative impacts of the technology including job displacement, according to a Dexian report published Wednesday. The talent provider surveyed 1,000 full-time workers and 500 C-suite leaders for its Work Futures 2026 report.
- Part of the concern stems from a lack of confidence in adoption efforts. More than 1 in 4 employees have little or no trust in employers’ ability to deploy AI and automation in a fair way, according to the report.
- Despite worker anxiety, surveyed C-suite leaders say their companies are in a better position to adopt AI than last year. More than half described their companies as “very prepared” to integrate AI and ML into operations, up from 38% in last year’s survey.
Dive Insight:
Enterprise AI tools have promised to remove repetitive, time-consuming tasks from employees’ desks. But workers are worried that AI adoption might leave them without a job altogether.
Concerns have risen among workers in recent years. Fears around AI-driven job displacement nearly doubled in 2025 from the prior year, according to KPMG. And there’s data to support their worries: Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked nearly 55,000 job cuts attributed to AI last year, and previously warned the size of AI-driven layoffs might be underreported.
The complexity of AI adoption calls on CIOs and other tech leaders to be intentional about AI adoption efforts, according to Lydia Wilson, chief people officer at Dexian.
“The first thing that I would say, which nobody’s going to want to hear, is slow down,” Wilson told CIO Dive. The success of AI adoption efforts hinge on communication and change management, especially “getting people on board, making sure you’re over-communicating,” Wilson added.
Centers of excellence can help companies steer AI adoption and improve outcomes through collaboration, experts previously told CIO Dive.
“I do agree with the approach,” Wilson said in reference to cross-function initiatives. “But I’m giving it a little caveat: If your culture is not set up already [with] trust and a form of two-way communication, that single group is not going to matter.”
The lack of communication is driving more than 1 in 5 workers to feel not very or not at all confident that their employers are investing in practices to help them thrive amid AI adoption efforts, according to the Dexian report.
“I don’t think senior leaders are collaborating as well as or as close as they should be,” said Wilson. “Get on board with your other senior leaders, with how you communicate any kind of major change. And if you fumbled, stand up and say you fumbled.”