According to an American Management Association survey, more workplaces have an AI strategy, but employees still fear a lack of a “centralized approach.”
More organizations are embracing generative AI into their workplaces, according to a new report. But many employees say they need better training around how to use it.
The American Management Association report, Organizations Make Progress Adopting AI, but Many Employees Feel Left Behind, was released last month and is based on a survey of more than 1,200 knowledge workers in North America. The survey found that the percentage of organizations leveraging AI has spiked in the past year, up from 30 percent in 2023 to 57 percent in 2024. And nearly half of organizations now say they have an AI strategy, climbing from 17 percent in 2023 to 47 percent in 2024.
The report correlates training employees around AI with increasing trust in the workplace around it. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) say they “trust managers to utilize AI fairly and with transparency.” Naveen Muraka, an AI expert who responded to questions submitted to AMA about the survey, said training should work hand-in-hand with clear guidelines around AI usage.
A third of workers said their colleagues are using AI without a centralized approach.
“Effective training is essential for building a strong foundation that enables employees to confidently and responsibly engage with AI tools,” Muraka said. “To support this, organizations must establish clear policies that empower staff while setting guardrails for safe usage. Providing foundational overviews, access to hands-on resources, and targeted technical workshops significantly increases the chances of successful adoption. Depending on the organization’s pace of innovation and culture around AI, updating training and policies every 6 to 12 months is a practical cadence to stay aligned with evolving technologies.”
Despite those strides, a third of respondents to the survey (32 percent) said their colleagues are using AI without “a centralized approach.” That can create security issues as well as inefficiencies, Muraka said.
“It’s critical to approach AI adoption as a team effort, with clear roles and a shared framework to guide usage,” he said. “Without a unified approach, individuals may unintentionally duplicate work, struggle to validate AI-generated outputs, or hesitate to disclose their use of AI, slowing innovation and collaboration.”
Muraka advised organizations just entering the fray—or looking to better manage AI usage—to be transparent about how it should and shouldn’t be used, and develop pilot projects to ensure that those guidelines are being observed.
According to the survey, the smallest organizations are the ones most likely to struggle with leveraging and managing AI. That can include nonprofits, Muraka said, which “often face significant constraints, including limited budgets, staffing shortages, and underdeveloped IT infrastructure.” Moreover, smaller organizations have to deal with “limited staffing, uncertainty about where to begin, or a lack of in-house expertise.”
Muraka advised such groups to look for places where they can realize obvious efficiencies. “This is where off-the-shelf AI tools, paired with basic training, is a game-changer,” he said. “In practice, we’ve seen passionate and resourceful individuals in nonprofits start small by identifying simple workflows that can be streamlined with AI, cutting tasks that once took days down to an hour or less.”
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