Published on the 18/03/2026 | Written by Heather Wright

We’re not teammates…

AI might be reshaping digital workflows, but most employees still don’t see it as essential, let alone sentient, with a big disconnect between leadership expectations and employee realities.

A survey by US work management platform Slingshot shows that while nearly half of employers embrace AI as a ‘team member’, employees are much less inclined to see it as a co-worker, with 54 percent say of employees saying AI is helpful but not critical to their work. Just 19 percent say they rely on it in a meaningful day-to-day way.

Use of AI tools at work isn’t as mandatory as the C-suite thinks…

Interestingly, only 15 percent of those surveyed felt like AI was a potential replacement for parts of their job, and 20 percent said it was like a teammate, supporting and enhancing their work.

Generational data reinforces the divide, with 28 percent of Gen Z and 24 percent of millennials seeing AI as a ‘teammate’, versus just nine percent of Gen X and Y respondents. But even the younger employees express caution. Their concerns over being replaced by AI are also higher, at 19 percent and 17 percent respectively versus 14 percent for Gen X and Y.

The survey, which polled 500 full-time US employees across a range of age groups, also highlights that use of AI tools at work isn’t as mandatory as the C-suite thinks – another example of the widening gap between leadership assumptions and employee reality. The research says 86 percent of executives believe AI usage is required in their business’ operations, but just 49 percent of mid-level management agree – and are passing on to employees – that AI is a requirement.

At the employee level, confidence is even more subdued. Only eight percent of workers say they are fully trained on AI tools, with younger staff showing higher confidence (43 percent of Gen Z) compared with just 15 percent of Boomers. That training gap is likely contributing to the inconsistent adoption patterns reported across workplaces.

In yet another example of the disconnect between the C-suite and the actual company approach 70 percent of executives said their employees are ‘constantly’ relying on data. The employee take on things? Only 31 percent agree, saying they use data to drive decisions regularly. The top reasons for the lower data usage among employees were reliance on their own personal experience (29 percent) and dependence on a data analyst or team (27 percent).

“Companies are being told that if they are still looking at AI as just another tool, they’re already behind – and are adjusting strategies accordingly,” Dean Guida, founder of Slingshot and CEO of parent company Infragistics, says. “However, while the top office may be putting AI at the centre of business processes and decision making, this ‘teammate mentality’ doesn’t automatically trickle down to the entire organisation.”

For a company to harness AI’s full potential, he says a bottom-up approach, focused on employee education, clear AI policies and AI transparency, needs to be instituted.

The Slingshot report doesn’t break out results by industry, however, which is notable, given the wide variation of AI adoption across sectors, and it’s likely those in some sectors would beg to differ on the results.

In Australia, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources’ AI Adoption Tracker shows among SMEs, retail trade is leading the charge with adoption, followed by health and education, services and hospitality – all in the low to mid-40 percent for adoption.  Agriculture, forestry and fishing lagged at just 19 percent adoption.

AU legal sector data reveals cost of outdated tech

Separate Australian market data underscores how far the gap between technological promise and operational reality can stretch, particularly in professions where documentation, billable time and administrative load are crucial.

Clio’s State of Legal Tech 2026 report shows that 60 percent of Australian lawyers lose over six hours a week – or 44 days, or nearly nine working weeks, a year – to inefficient systems. That’s significant time lost in an industry built on billable hours.

These productivity losses aren’t isolated. The research, which was conducted by YouGov and surveyed 1,001 practising lawyers and attorneys across Australia, also reveals a sector-wide pattern of data access issues and vendor lock-in. Nearly 71 percent of lawyers report facing withheld or delayed access to their own practice data when attempting to switch technology providers with delays often stretching into weeks and accompanied by hefty data retrieval fees averaging AU$24,861.