New Data Shows a Huge Gap Between Executives and Employees on AI Adoption and ROI

A new survey reveals a staggering disconnect between how executives think AI is performing inside their companies and what's actually happening.

The data comes from Section's 2026 AI Proficiency Report, which surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers at companies with 1,000+ employees across the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

The numbers are brutal: 40% of non-management employees report saving absolutely no time when using AI. Meanwhile, 40% of executives claim it saves them more than eight hours a week.

What’s going on?

To understand this gap and why every business leader should pay attention, I turned to SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 193 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.

A Failure of Leadership, Not Technology

Here's what the numbers show:

• 67% of non-management staff say they save less than two hours a week or no time at all using AI. 
• 69% are "AI experimenters," meaning they use AI only for very basic tasks such as summarizing meeting notes or rewriting emails.
• 3% of the workforce qualifies as AI practitioners or experts, people who have actually integrated AI into meaningful workflows and see significant productivity gains.

"This is a failure in leadership and a lack of AI education in companies," Roetzer says.

"It is literally impossible for a knowledge worker in any industry to not save time using generative AI if they are properly trained and taught personalized use cases relevant to their role."

Executives Are Living in a Different Reality

The disconnect between top leadership and the rest of the organization is jarring. Here’s what else the survey found: 

• 80% of C-suite executives say their company has AI tools with clear access and processes but only 32% of individual contributors agree.
• Two-thirds of the C-suite say they have a formal AI strategy. Only 20% of individual contributors say the same.
• 75% of executives say they're excited about AI yet 68% of individual contributors at companies report feeling anxious or overwhelmed.

"It's obviously a disconnect from leadership and not understanding internally what's going on," says Roetzer.

"If a knowledge worker is saying, 'I'm not saving time,' and they have access to Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, whatever they're given access to, then someone has failed them."

The Real Problem: Not Knowing How to Apply AI

The survey reveals that the biggest barrier isn't access to tools or even prompting skills. It's a fundamental lack of understanding and imagination about what AI can actually do for specific roles.

Consider the top work-related AI use cases reported: 14% of workers say their most valuable use is as a Google search replacement. The second most common is draft generation. Third is grammar and tone editing.

So employees are using incredibly powerful AI systems to do the digital equivalent of spell check?

The data backs this up across functions. According to Section's analysis:

• 54% of engineers don't use AI for writing or debugging code
• 87% of product managers don't use AI for creating prototypes

These are precisely the tasks where AI can deliver the most value. 

Just as telling: 25% of respondents say they don't have a work-related AI use case at all.

Why This Matters

The survey's findings point to a clear issue for business leaders: If your employees aren't saving time with AI, that's not an AI problem. That’s a leadership problem.

Companies have made the right directional investments. The survey shows that 63% of organizations have or are developing AI policies, 50% of employees have access to AI tools, and 44% receive some form of AI training.

But these investments are producing mediocre results. The problem is that most training stops at safety and prompting basics. It doesn't help employees identify the specific, high-value applications for their roles. And it doesn't provide the sustained support needed to move from experimenter to practitioner.

Individual contributors are being hit hardest. They're the least likely to have clear access to tools, tool reimbursement, or training. Only 7% of individual contributors say their managers expect daily AI use. As a result, they're the most anxious and the least likely to see AI having a transformative impact.

Roetzer sees the situation as fundamentally solvable but only if leaders step in.

"There's no other excuse for it," he says. "If you have employees saying, 'We're not saving any time,' and you've paid 20 bucks a month for each of them to have a license to a platform of your choice, that is a “you” problem. You have not properly trained them."