Your Boss Will Soon Grade You On AI Usage — Here’s Why

Here’s a number that should terrify every CEO: Daily AI usage has doubled in the past 12 months — from 4% to 8% of employees.

Yes, you read that correctly. After billions in investment and endless hype, 92% of employees still don’t use AI daily.

At first glance, this seems to capture the spectacular failure of corporate AI adoption. Yet, this belies a fundamental truth that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently admitted: “The hardest part of AI isn’t the tech — it’s getting people to change how they work.”

And, yes, companies need to push employees to change how they work in the AI era. According to the PwC 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer, since generative AI’s proliferation in 2022, global productivity growth has nearly quadrupled in industries most exposed to AI (e.g. financial services, software publishing), rising from 7% from 2018-2022 to 27% from 2018-2024. In contrast, the rate of productivity growth in industries least exposed to AI (e.g. mining, hospitality) declined from 10% to 9% over the same period. It’s not a question of if companies should drive AI production, but of how.

The Adoption Mirage

The headlines scream success. A large majority (78%) of respondents say their organizations use AI in at least one business function, according to McKinsey’s latest State of AI report. Companies are patting themselves on the back for “digital transformation.”

However, the success or failure of technology has always been at the mercy of its adoption by people. This is a fundamental principle in business transformation that consulting firms have studied for decades and have created countless presentations and papers to help enterprises with organizational change.

If we dig deeper into the data, a different story emerges.

Despite two years of AI hype, only 8% of U.S. employees use AI daily — up from a tiny 4% just 12 months ago. Even “frequent” usage (a few times a week) sits at just 19%. The vast majority (60%) still don’t use AI regularly at all, according to Gallup’s latest comprehensive workplace study. Think about that — we’re celebrating going from terrible to slightly less terrible.

The Real Numbers Nobody Wants to Share

In another recent study, KPMG surveyed 48,340 people across 47 countries to understand attitudes toward AI and its usage in the workplace.

Only 17% of the employees said they intentionally use AI tools daily
Almost a third (30%) said they do so only a few times a year or every few months
A plurality of employees (27%) said they never intentionally use AI at work

But wait, it gets worse. Despite the 58% usage rate, only 47% of the surveyed employees reported any form of training or education in AI.

Translation: We’re asking employees to adopt technology they don’t understand, for purposes that aren’t clear, with no training or support.

The Mandate Approach: Use It or Lose (Your Good Review)

Microsoft is making AI usage mandatory for performance evaluations, reported Business Insider. Julia Liuson, president of the Microsoft division responsible for developer tools such as AI coding service GitHub Copilot, recently sent managers messages stating, “AI is now a fundamental part of how we work. Just like collaboration, data-driven thinking, and effective communication, using AI is no longer optional — it’s core to every role and every level.”

To drive AI use across the company, managers must now evaluate employees based on their internal AI tool adoption. Microsoft is even considering formal AI usage metrics for future performance reviews.

The Evangelist Approach: Train the Trainers

While most companies struggle with single-digit daily usage, Moderna achieved near-100% voluntary AI adoption within six months of deploying OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise. The difference? It didn’t mandate — it taught.

Moderna set its objective high — achieve 100% adoption and proficiency of generative AI by all its people with access to digital solutions in a six-month period.

Brad Miller, Moderna’s chief information officer, was pragmatic about the task at hand, noting, “90% of companies want to do genAI, but only 10% of them are successful, and the reason they fail is because they haven’t built the mechanisms of actually transforming the workforce to adopt new technology and new capabilities.”

For this, Moderna assigned a team of dedicated experts to drive a bespoke transformation program. Their approach combined individual, collective and structural change-management initiatives. “We believe in collective intelligence when it comes to paradigm changes,” said Miller. “It’s everyone together, everyone with a voice and nobody left behind.”

The pharmaceutical giant’s results speak for themselves:

750 custom GPTs built across the company within two months
40% of weekly active users created their own GPTs
Each user has 120 ChatGPT conversations per week on average (that’s three per hour!)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Moderna went so far as to merge its technology and HR departments, creating 3,000 GPTs while restructuring roles with regulatory oversight.

How did it do all of this? By solving real problems. Clinical teams built “Dose ID GPT” for trial analysis. Legal departments created contract review assistants. HR streamlined onboarding.

Most importantly, Moderna didn’t force adoption through performance reviews. It created tools so useful that employees couldn’t imagine working without them. That’s the difference between compliance and transformation.

The Path Forward: What Actually Works

Amid this push for AI adoption, some patterns of success emerge from the Gallup data:

Clear Strategy Matters: When employees strongly agree that their leadership has communicated a clear plan for integrating AI, they are three times as likely to feel very prepared to work with AI and 2.6 times as likely to feel comfortable using AI in their role.

Experience Changes Everything: Sixty-eight percent of employees who had firsthand experience using AI to interact with customers said it had a positive effect on customer interactions; only 13% of employees who had not used AI with customers believed it would have a positive effect.

Leaders Use It More: Frequent AI use is also more common among leaders (defined as managers of managers), at 33%. They are twice as likely as individual contributors (16%) to say they use AI a few times a week or more.

Based on successful implementations at Moderna and others, here’s what measurably works:

Start with the willing: Companies seeing 3x better adoption rates with volunteer pilot programs
Solve specific problems: 78% higher usage when AI targets identified pain points
Measure outcomes, not usage: ROI improves 45% when tracking business metrics over tool metrics
Address fears directly: Companies with AI anxiety programs see better adoption
Create safe experimentation: Successful programs include “failure-friendly” zones

The Uncomfortable Truth

After analyzing data from thousands of employees across multiple studies, the conclusion is inescapable: The AI revolution is failing because companies are missing the most crucial steps: leadership from the top and training for everyone.

They’re buying tools instead of building capabilities. They’re mandating usage instead of demonstrating value. They’re measuring adoption instead of impact.

Most importantly, they’re treating AI like software when it’s actually a fundamental shift in how work gets done.

In five years, asking if someone uses AI will be like asking if they use email.

The companies that win won’t be those with the strictest mandates. They’ll be the ones where that 8% of daily users becomes 80% — not because they have to, but because they can’t imagine working without it.

The question isn’t whether your employees will use AI. It’s whether you’ll lead that transition thoughtfully or force it desperately.