Summary: A recent Click Boarding project found that employees are pretending to use AI tools just to comply with internal protocols. Prioritising change management and building employee trust can help minimise the risk of employee dissatisfaction and disengagement.
If you’re struggling to implement artificial intelligence (AI) processes and policies across your organisation, you are not alone. Employee buy-in is tough. In fact, for workers in the US who haven’t been using AI, Gallup found that nearly half (44 per cent) don’t believe that it can assist with the type of work that they do.
In reaction to this resistance, you might be considering formal mandates to boost adoption rates. And on paper, the results can look good. But compliance doesn’t equal commitment, and forcing your employees to do something that they are not on board with can, and will, reduce engagement and even retention.
While your reports are showing an uptick in the use of AI tools, how are employees feeling about it? Focusing on the wrong metrics instead of effectively managing change could cost you in the long run.
Faking it: Are your employees really on board with AI?
Even though conversations about AI have been bubbling up for some time, we have seen teams often surprised by how it just seemed to ‘show up’ one day, with new tools, policies and big shifts in priorities.
As part of a project I was involved in recently at Click Boarding, we reviewed Glassdoor reviews and social media posts to understand how employees are responding to AI mandates. Something quite surprising we found was that employees are pretending to use AI tools just to comply with internal protocols.
In a thread about coping with mandatory AI policies at work, multiple people admitted to exaggerating or fabricating their usage.
One commenter said that while AI is still trending, they feel unable to convince their management that they are better off without it. Instead, they pretend to use it and even invent time-saving figures to show their boss.
Another employee received a poor performance evaluation for the first time due to their AI use. They didn’t want to use AI in their role and, instead of being listened to, were encouraged by their manager to conduct “meaningless” chatbot interactions to boost their tracked AI usage and meet internal reporting standards.
Mandating AI without a clear purpose or strategy is what’s leading employees, including management, to take unnecessary steps to avoid negative consequences, creating distrust rather than gaining productivity.
What these employees are doing could easily appear to be compliance. It’s only when you dive deeper, and listen to what they are really saying, that the disengagement becomes more obvious.
Employees are pretending to use AI tools just to comply with internal protocols
A clear disconnect
The disconnect between employers and employees is even more apparent when you look at broader insights. According to a Gallup report, only four per cent of employers cite employee resistance as a barrier to AI adoption, yet other data shows:
- Nearly one-quarter of workers (22 per cent) would leave a job due to excessive AI use
- There are 1,000 searches for ‘made to use AI at work’ on average each month in the US
- Employee engagement has fallen to its lowest level in 10 years and job-seeking activity is at a decade high.
How change management can help AI adoption
Successfully managing AI adoption isn’t just getting great employee usage scores. It actually relies on HR’s traditional role in guiding change. This has always been one of the most challenging aspects of running a business, long before AI even existed.
When implementing new AI processes, I recommend:
- Sharing important information early in the new hire process, sometimes with video content, to set expectations early
- Updating compliance-driven policies to include new AI information and require employees to sign these off electronically to ensure company-wide awareness of any changes
- Creating new workflows that can be assigned to tenured employees to solidify understanding.
AI adoption can also be higher when employees get to test or play with tools to figure out the best ways they can work with AI to improve their own personal working experience.
Just like AI must learn, so do the employees working with it. And as with any change, it is a process, not just a switch to turn on.
Building employee trust
It might sound simple, but communication and collaboration are two things you need to focus on to build and retain trust throughout the change management process.
The social media research we conducted highlighted frustrations from employees around not being included in discussions and feeling blamed for the poor performance of AI tools.
HR and leadership teams should instead be building trust by asking questions before challenges arise to demonstrate genuine awareness through real action. And this should begin as early as possible.
When you ask a new hire how they feel before they even start a new job and then continue to talk with them, they are more likely to open up later.
Conversely, if an employee were to leave with lingering issues, keeping that same feedback door open during offboarding can also provide an alternative outlet to sharing feedback publicly.
While it is true that the implementation of AI processes can be disruptive to the workplace, prioritising change management and building employee trust will help minimise the risk of employee dissatisfaction, disengagement and resignations.
As with any change, it is a process, not just a switch to turn on
Key takeaways
- HR leaders should challenge whether AI KPIs are measuring impact or simply measuring usage
- Organisations that fail to explain the why behind AI risk creating confusion, frustration and disengagement
- Giving employees time to explore how AI fits their role often delivers better outcomes than hard mandates offer
- Building trust through ongoing communication is still the most effective way to reduce resistance to change.
Did you enjoy this article? Here’s your next read: Forget trust. Is AI reliable?
