Eraneos’ new People & AI Study 2026 shows that AI has arrived in daily work across European organizations and moved well beyond the pilot phase. AI already touches an average of 39% of daily workflows, and 92% of respondents say their work would be disrupted if AI tools were removed. Yet 75% of organizations do not see real business benefit from their AI investments. The reason is not the technology itself, but the conditions around it: governance, accountability and capability development that put people at the center of how AI is adopted and used.
The question is no longer whether you have access to AI – everyone does. The question is whether your organization is built so that agents can act on its knowledge safely and effectively
Key findings of the study
- AI is widespread, impact is limited. AI has become operational infrastructure: 92% of respondents say their work would be disrupted if AI tools were removed. Yet only 25% see significant impact across three or more value streams simultaneously, and only 7% see it across every dimension that was measured.
- Leaders and frontline staff see different realities. C‑level executives consistently rate guidance, trust and capability around AI on average 2.3 times more positively than specialists, revealing a perception gap that undermines effective transformation. The gap is widest on trust in AI actions, where C-level confidence is more than three times higher than among specialists. A similar gap shows up in practical support: only 27% of employees say they have time for hands-on experimentation with AI, while 62% of leaders believe their employees have that time.
In many organizations, leadership and the workforce are effectively describing two different companies when it comes to AI. The work starts with bringing those perspectives together before making further investments,
- Adoption is a vanity metric. Sectors with high AI adoption, such as financial services, do not automatically achieve stronger business outcomes than those with lower adoption. What matters is governance, accountability and capability built around the technology – all centered on people and their work. Also, only 39% of organizations have currently clearly defined accountability for AI-driven errors.
- How AI capability is built decides whether it sticks. Occasional, standalone training – today’s most common approach – delivers the weakest outcomes of any method studied. Where AI capability is fully embedded in workflows and people development, employee trust reaches 56% – a 3.7-times increase over the most common approach. Yet only 12% of respondents say AI capability is deeply embedded in their organization’s workflows and processes.
Training alone barely moves the needle. Confidence triples only when AI is embedded in the work people are already doing. Enablement is not a program, it is how the work itself is designed.
Putting people at the center of AI transformation
Taken together, the findings challenge the standard AI transformation sequence of technology first, governance second, and people and capability last. The organizations with the strongest outcomes start with clear governance, invest in embedded capability development, and close the perception gap between leadership and the frontline so they can act on a shared reality.
These conditions are organizational, not technological, and they can be deliberately designed. Eraneos’ human-centric People & AI approach reflects this insight: AI does not transform organizations, people do. When organizations redesign processes, structures and the role of the human expert around AI, technology becomes a lever for better decisions, more resilient teams and sustainable impact.
About the study
The Eraneos People & AI Study 2026 is based on a survey of 658 senior executives and their teams across Financial Services, Transport & Logistics, Energy & Utilities, and the Public sector in Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. Respondents were screened for seniority and sector relevance, not AI maturity. Each organization was captured from five vantage points simultaneously: C-level, Director, Senior Manager, Manager, and Specialist. Across 19 indicators, the survey measured three dimensions: AI capability, adoption, and trust & governance.
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About Eraneos
Eraneos is an international strategy, transformation and technology consulting group, setting organizations up for a new era of progress. We unite next-gen strategy, AI & tech, and transformation capabilities as one to deliver real‑world impact at speed, with people at the core of every solution. We call it human-centric value creation, empowered by technology. Our team of around 1,300 dedicated professionals is based in offices across Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, the UK, Singapore, Japan, and the USA, and seamlessly blends global perspectives with strong local roots. In 2025, Eraneos Group realized a turnover of over EUR 300 million.
