Workers are adopting AI technology faster than many of their leaders realize. This finding is one of several highlighted in McKinsey’s latest report, Superagency in the Workplace. All this week, our data visualizations will focus on themes from this report, such as employee enthusiasm for AI and the technology’s economic potential. For more, see the report.
Employees are more ready to adopt AI in the workplace than business leaders realize, note Senior Partner Lareina Yee and coauthors. C-suite leaders estimate that only 4 percent of employees use gen AI for at least 30 percent of their daily work, according to McKinsey surveys. However, this estimate falls short; 13 percent of employees report that they use gen AI at that level.
Image description:
A stacked bar chart compares the anticipated timelines of US employees’ and C-suite executives’ use of gen AI for >30% of their daily tasks. For C-suite respondents, 4% reported already using gen AI, 16% anticipated using it within 1 year, 56% within 1–5 years, 11% at >5 years, 10% did not anticipate using it, and 3% were unsure. In contrast, among employees, 13% reported already using generative AI, 34% expected to use it within 1 year, 37% within 1–5 years, 5% at >5 years, 7% did not anticipate using it, and 4% were unsure. The chart highlights that employees are three times more likely to be currently using gen AI than C-suite executives expect to.
Note: Figures may not sum to 100%, because of rounding. This image description was completed with the assistance of Writer, a gen AI tool.
Source: McKinsey US CxO survey, Oct–Nov 2024 (n = 118); McKinsey US employee survey, Oct–Nov 2024 (n = 3,002).
End of image description.
To read the report, see “Superagency in the workplace: Empowering people to unlock AI’s full potential,” January 28, 2025.