Despite the significant investments that many organizations have put into generative artificial intelligence, most are not seeing the productivity gains that they expected.

Simply adopting new technologies is no longer enough to drive productivity gains, if it ever were. In today’s rapidly evolving digital workplace, leaders face the ongoing challenge of translating digital investments into tangible business outcomes.

Information technology leaders responsible for AI in the digital workplace can accelerate value realization by helping workers build relevant skills and ambition, equipping teams with targeted hands-on training, and encouraging employees to apply AI beyond administrative tasks by recognizing creative and innovative applications.

To realize the true promise of AI, digital workplace leaders must move beyond adoption and empower employees to use it for creative, strategic and problem-solving work. These five trends offer digital workplace leaders an evidence-backed and human-centric approach to translate gen AI investments into business value today.

Trend 1: The digital plateau: Productivity gains stall in the AI era

After a sharp rise in self-reported productivity during the wave of digital transformation in the 2020s, which resulted in widespread distributed work, recent data show this momentum has slowed.

This leveling off suggests that the easy wins from digitization have largely been realized. As hybrid work arrangements become more common, factors like increased commuting and declining discretionary effort are beginning to offset earlier gains.

For organizations, this plateau signals that simply adding new technology, including AI, will not automatically translate into higher productivity. These findings reinforce the ongoing challenge of using AI effectively to sustain and grow workforce productivity.

IT leaders should regularly review employee journeys and feedback to understand what makes people more productive and what slows them down. They should also take what they learn from data and feedback to fix bottlenecks, streamline processes and invest in technology that supports how people work day to day.

Trend 2: Digital dexterity declines: Workers are less skilled and engaged than ever

Closing the gap between IT spending and C-suite expectations for productivity gains depends on workers using technology effectively. Employee enablement is a core responsibility of the digital workplace leader role.

Recent surveys have shown a precipitous drop in “digitally dexterous” workers, in other words, those who have the ability and ambition to use technology for better business results. Digital dexterity surged in 2020, reflecting a workforce energized and empowered to embrace digital tools during the early days of widespread remote work. However, now, the momentum has sharply reversed.

As organizations accelerate AI adoption, fewer workers now feel empowered or motivated to use these tools than just a few years ago. This is a trend that could stall digital transformation efforts.

For IT leaders, the path forward is clear. They must empower every employee, not just IT specialists, to leverage technology confidently for business value. IT leaders should offer practical training sessions and workshops that focus on real business scenarios and everyday work, helping employees build both confidence and competence with AI. They should create recognition programs that spotlight employees who actively use digital tools to solve problems, improve processes or innovate.

Trend 3: Everyday AI habits: How frequency supersedes expertise

Many executives expect AI investments to unlock significant productivity gains, but the evidence shows that simply deploying it is not enough. The real differentiator is not access to AI, but how deeply and routinely employees integrate it into their daily work habits. There are three factors that can shape the productivity impact of AI:

• Frequency: The more often workers use everyday AI tools, the more dramatic productivity improvements they see. On average, 44% of workers use AI tools daily and most report only modest productivity improvements. The strongest predictor of significant productivity gains is frequent, habitual use. Workers who use AI every day are 4.6 times more likely to report being “much more productive” than those who use it less often.
• Tool variety: The source and variety of AI tools workers use can significantly influence productivity outcomes. More than half of employees now use a mix of personal and organizational AI tools for work. Those who use both are 1.6 times more likely to report significant productivity gains compared to those who use only one type, or none at all. This further highlights the growing importance of flexibility and choice in the digital workplace.
• AI skills: While many workers feel equipped to use everyday AI, this confidence does not always result in meaningful productivity gains. A majority of employees say they have the necessary skills to use everyday AI tools at work, but those same workers show only a modest improvement in productivity.

​​The data illuminates what digital workplace leaders have known for decades: technology alone does not guarantee higher productivity. The organizations that pull ahead will be those with workers who weave AI into their daily routines. Workers who use AI on a daily basis are nearly five times more likely to achieve breakthrough productivity gains, making everyday habits, not expertise, the true engine of value.

IT leaders responsible for the digital workplace should drive AI adoption by proactively gathering and sharing employee feedback on AI tools to surface barriers and successes with stakeholders. An AI listening strategy should weave quantitative signals such as usage frequency and prompt volume with qualitative signals such as voice of the employee surveys for a multidimensional view that enables greater insights.

Leaders should also work closely with team managers and business stakeholders to help workers integrate AI into everyday workflows, with capabilities tailored to their roles and processes. For example, IT leaders can provide clear examples, prompts and checklists to help employees get started and scale their effectiveness.

Trend 4: Trapped in the admin cycle: How AI reinforces low-value work

Many employees are caught in an “admin loop,” where AI is primarily used for routine tasks like generating content, finding information and summarizing emails. While these activities save time, it leaves the promise of AI unfulfilled.

Truly productive workers use AI to automate workflows, broaden their awareness of important information and reinvest saved time into innovative or impactful work. Not only does this save more time per week on average, but it elevates the quality of their output, rather than simply increasing the quantity.

To break free from the admin loop, IT leaders should develop an “AI in action” showcase in their digital workplace newsletter, intranet page or community of practice to promote successes and actively identify teams or individuals achieving meaningful results through AI workflows.

IT leaders should also establish regular, accessible channels and feedback loops, and nomination forms for employees to propose innovative AI use cases, to share candid feedback on current tools.

As a bonus, IT leaders should seek a small amount of funding to give a small, but meaningful award to a team or individual each quarter to celebrate their “AI in action” achievements.

Trend 5: The executive AI optimism gap: Productivity gains aren’t evenly shared

Research has shown that executive leaders are bullish on the impact AI will have over the next few years. Senior leaders seem to report more productivity due to the everyday use of AI, while individual contributors seem to report significantly less, or none at all.

This optimism gap presents a real risk: senior leaders, buoyed by their own positive experiences, may overestimate the impact of AI across the workforce and accelerate adoption without addressing the barriers faced by frontline employees. Meanwhile, those on the front lines may grow increasingly skeptical, disengaged or resistant to new AI initiatives if they don’t see tangible benefits in their daily work.

IT leaders must establish a consistent process for capturing authentic employee experiences with AI across a diversity of roles and teams by hosting interactive town halls, deploying targeted surveys and facilitating curated feedback sessions.

And lastly, they should develop and communicate a quarterly “AI optimism scorecard” that transparently presents expectations, key insights, barriers and success stories side by side to help leaders recalibrate strategy and align investments.

In conclusion, these five trends provide leaders with clarity on how gen AI can drive real workforce productivity, and how it does not. Applying these insights is essential for building a sustainable, human-centered strategy that unlocks lasting value from gen AI within their organizations.

Tori Paulman is a vice president on Gartner’s CIO research team and a co-leader of Gartner’s cross-functional Future of Work research team. Paulman, who wrote this article for SiliconANGLE, and other Gartner analysts will provide additional insights on cloud strategies and infrastructure and operations trends at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference taking place Dec. 9-11 in Las Vegas. Follow news and updates from these conferences on X and LinkedIn using #GartnerIO.

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