Compare these recent PwC statistics. According to our 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer, 100% of industries surveyed are increasing their usage of AI, backed by accelerating investment. But turn to our latest Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, and only 14% of employees are using GenAI tools daily at work. Then check out our Global CEO Survey, and you’ll find a mere one in eight say their business is reaping both increased revenues and reduced costs from AI.
True, these are just snapshots of a fast-evolving landscape. But they do build into a clear picture. One where the high levels of ambition and excitement around AI among both companies and workers are in stark contrast to the relatively low degrees of adoption and impact being realised on the ground. It’s a hype/reality gap that we see playing out every day. And so long as it continues, the full benefits anticipated from AI will remain elusive.
Our journey of discovery: transforming functions…
Hardly surprising, then, that this is a disconnect we’re helping more and more clients to close. And it’s an area where one of our biggest assets is our experience of scaling AI adoption and usage across our own workforce. This drive has involved us deliberately becoming our own “client zero” for AI transformation, experiencing and addressing at first hand the opportunities and challenges that other businesses will encounter on the journey. Which makes us ideally placed to help navigate them.
What does being client zero look like for us? To help propel adoption and everyday usage, we’ve democratised access for all our people to leading AI tools, providing a bottom-up, workforce-wide stimulus for sandbox experimentation and innovation. At the same time, from top-down, we’ve been transforming all of our business functions - human capital, finance, marketing & sales, and more - by embedding AI into the way we work and how we deliver for our internal clients. We call this reinvention: it’s the piece that takes time and that will show real dividends in the future.
…while reinvigorating skills through culture and “raising the pyramid”
Catalysed by this twin-track approach, the pace of progress has frankly exceeded our expectations. But what’s really powering it isn’t the technology. By far the most inspiring aspect of our AI transformation has been the way our people have taken charge of investing in themselves and driving forward their individual upskilling journeys. Over 90% of our worldwide workforce are doing this, reflecting a firm-wide culture that encourages and celebrates learning. Because, as we’ve learned, AI transformation will stand or fall by the skills that people bring to make it work.
In getting our people’s skills fit for a future world of work reinvented through AI, a key concept that we’ve applied is “raising the pyramid”. AI has an unrivalled ability to take over and improve routine, low-value tasks historically done by junior workers. But any sustainable business still needs a constant fresh infusion of young talent. So, far from taking out the bottom of the pyramid, we're investing in technology to lift people up and through the value chain, amplifying human judgment and creating more headroom for our junior people to do higher-trust work. It’s a continuing journey, but we're getting there. And we're increasing our momentum by making strides by championing apprenticeship and hosting AI and human skill immersion experiences for new associates.
Lesson learned, challenges to overome
Inivitably, there have been bumps in the road. For example, in our efforts to scale workforce-wide AI usage, innovation and reskilling, we found the biggest challenge wasn’t our people’s motivation to experiment and learn - which they have in spades - but giving them the space, permission and confidence to invest the time and effort required. Again, this comes down to the right culture: one that promotes the behavioural changes needed to work in an AI-enabled business where skills needs are constantly changing - and where people will learn and adapt throughout their careers.
A closing thought. In five years’ time, when today’s leaders look back on their organisations’ AI transformations, what factors might they feel they underestimated at the time? Two spring to mind. One is the power of human skills, which will ultimately determine whether AI delivers on its promise. The other is agility, at every level from the enterprise to the individual worker. Nobody can perfectly predict how this revolution will play out, and there will be unanticipated twists and turns. You - and your workforce - need to be ready.
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