IBM Study Finds AI Skills Gap Between Executives and Employees

Companies are struggling to align their expectations of workers in an AI-driven workplace with employees’ own understanding of the skills they need, according to a global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value.

The study, conducted with Oxford Economics, surveyed 1,500 chief human resource officers and equivalent senior executives across 21 geographies and 23 industries, as well as 8,800 full-time employees across 28 countries between April and June 2026.

The sharpest divide centres on human judgement. While 71 percent of CHROs identified the ability to supervise, validate and override AI outputs as the most important workforce capability, only 29 percent of employees considered judgement important.

Critical thinking was another area where employers and workers placed significant emphasis, although concerns about its erosion were widespread among employees. Some 57 percent of CHROs and 49 percent of employees identified critical thinking and problem framing as skills that matter most in the AI era.

Overall, 60 percent of employees said they were concerned about losing skills as AI becomes more embedded in their work. Among those concerned, three in four said AI had already eroded at least some of their skills, with critical thinking cited most frequently.

The findings suggest that the challenge for companies extends beyond teaching employees how to use AI. Organisations reporting greater value from the technology are redesigning workflows and decision-making processes to establish clearer boundaries between human and machine responsibilities.

Companies that explicitly define whether work is human-led, AI-assisted or AI-executed report an 18 percent reduction in risk and a 20 percent improvement in quality, according to the study.

HR departments, however, are often not involved early enough in AI strategy. Nearly 46 percent of organisations do not involve their CHRO when defining their AI strategy.

"AI is changing not only how work gets done, but where people can contribute the greatest value," said Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM's senior vice president and chief human resources officer.

As AI assumes more routine and process-driven tasks, she said, human capabilities will become increasingly important, with CHROs having a key role in redesigning workplaces around those capabilities.

Accountability is another source of tension. Some 43 percent of employees said they are blamed when something goes wrong with AI, while 41 percent of CHROs believe workers may not feel sufficiently safe to challenge or override AI-generated recommendations.

Some 36 percent of CHROs said unclear accountability makes AI deployment more difficult. Only 28 percent reported having a joint AI roadmap with IT supported by a shared operating cadence, while 73 percent said they struggle to coordinate consistently across the C-suite.

The study also found a relationship between the way human judgement is incorporated into work and employees’ confidence in AI-enabled decisions. Where judgement is built into workflows, 62 percent of CHROs reported rising employee confidence in AI decisions. Where it is not, 57 percent reported declining confidence.

HR involvement also appears to affect employees’ willingness to challenge AI recommendations. In organisations where the CHRO shares responsibility for deciding which decisions remain human-led, 76 percent of employees said they feel safe questioning or overriding AI recommendations. The proportion falls to 43 percent where HR has only an advisory role.

AI adoption is also generating work that companies may not fully capture in conventional productivity measures. Some 80 percent of CHROs said AI creates "invisible" work, including checking recommendations, correcting mistakes, supplying context and managing exceptions.

At the employee level, 42 percent said AI has increased their workload or that work associated with AI has gone unrecognised.

Meanwhile, 42 percent of CHROs said productivity gains from AI are primarily being channelled into innovation or reskilling.

Despite the growing responsibility placed on HR to manage workforce changes brought by AI, adoption within the function remains limited. The study found that 72 percent of organisations make limited or no use of AI within HR.

CHROs rated their HR functions particularly low in AI literacy across teams, at 13 percent, AI performance measurement, at 16 percent, and change management for AI adoption, at 20 percent.

Organisations with more mature HR AI capabilities, including governance, architecture and measurement, were nearly twice as likely to report a higher number of positive business performance indicators, the study found.

The research points to a workplace in which AI adoption is increasingly changing not just individual tasks but the division of responsibility between employees, managers and technology. For companies, the findings place greater emphasis on defining accountability and preserving opportunities for workers to exercise judgement as AI takes on more routine activities.

The IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics conducted the research through two complementary surveys between April and June 2026. The executive survey covered organisations with annual revenue or budgets ranging from US dollars 250 million to US dollars 123.7 billion and workforces ranging from 200 to more than 880,000 employees.

Source: FSX Business News