AI Value Will Depend Not Just On Employee Adoption But...: McKinsey

Companies that go beyond using artificial intelligence (AI) tools and redesign their workflows, operating models and organisational practices are likely to gain the most business value from the technology, according to a McKinsey report.

The report said the next phase of AI adoption will depend on how well companies move from individual employee use of AI to organisation-wide automation and a complete redesign of the way work is done.

"AI does not create enterprise value simply because more people use it," the report said. It added that companies making the most progress are restructuring workflows to fully utilise the technology.

However, the report said most companies are still at an early stage of AI adoption. Only 11 per cent of business leaders surveyed said their organisations had reached the reinvention stage.

The findings are based on a global survey of 750 employees and leaders across industries, conducted between February and April 2026. McKinsey identified three horizons of AI transformation -- enablement, automation and reinvention.

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In the first horizon, organisations provide employees with general-purpose AI tools to support existing tasks. In the second, companies use AI to automate and improve cross-functional workflows at scale. The third involves fundamentally reimagining roles, workflows and operating models around AI.

The report found a significant gap between employee and organisational readiness. While 70% of respondents said they felt personally prepared to adopt and use AI, only 27% of leaders believed their organisations were ready to make the people and culture changes required for an AI-enabled future.

"Employees are adapting to AI faster than the institutions they work in," McKinsey said, highlighting the growing gap between individual adoption and organisational preparedness.

McKinsey said organisational readiness was nearly twice as important as personal readiness in explaining differences between leaders who reported capturing value from AI and those who did not. Organisational readiness accounted for 48% of the difference, compared with 25% for personal readiness.

The consultancy said only 13% of leaders in the enablement horizon reported meaningful enterprise value from AI, compared with 24% in the automation horizon and 48% in the reinvention horizon.

At the earliest stage, companies that redesigned workflows were 5.3 times more likely to report enterprise value capture than those that left workflows unchanged. In the automation stage, organisations with highly AI-fluent leadership teams were 3.9 times more likely to report value capture. 

McKinsey identified trust as a critical factor across all three horizons. "AI creates potential. People create value," the report said, stressing the importance of employee trust, leadership and organisational change in turning AI capabilities into sustained business outcomes.

The report noted that AI is likely to create the greatest impact when companies treat its adoption as a fundamental organisational transformation rather than merely a technology deployment.