Companies Roll Out AI Agents Faster Than They Can Redesign Jobs

Most large companies have put AI into their core business processes. AI agents, systems being introduced to carry out work that previously required employees to complete multiple tasks or make routine decisions, are already inside many of those processes. 57% of organisations have embedded AI in core processes or deployed it broadly, Kyndryl found.

23% of organisations believe their workforce is fully ready for AI, Kyndryl found, down six percentage points from a year earlier. 88.4% of enterprises reported at least one AI agent-related security incident in the past year, AvePoint said. 81% of organisations expect AI agents to make impactful decisions within the next year. Only 25% completely trust AI systems to operate without human oversight.

AI Has Moved In. The Outcomes Have Not.

A Kyndryl survey of 1,100 senior business and technology leaders across eight countries found 57% of organisations have embedded AI in core processes or deployed it broadly. Only 32% said they achieved at least one of their two main AI objectives. Just 11% met both.

AI’s ability to reshape work is challenging organisations to reshape their workforce more rapidly than ever before. The leaders pulling ahead are aligning skills, roles and decision-making with how work is actually changing.

Mark Paulek, Kyndryl’s chief human resources officer, gave that quote in the company’s 2026 People Readiness Report. 79% of organisations told Kyndryl the speed of AI development would outpace their workforce, governance, and operating models. Kyndryl also found 77% of organisations have already scaled generative AI capabilities across multiple functions.

The Workforce Readiness Gap

23% of organisations told Kyndryl their workforce was fully ready for AI, down six percentage points from a year earlier. 52% of leaders said finding employees with the right AI skills had become more difficult in the past year. AvePoint found 46.9% of global employees already use AI agents weekly or daily. Skills and talent gaps now rank second only to security concerns as a barrier to AI success, Kyndryl said. The Kyndryl survey covered senior leaders in banking, insurance, manufacturing, telecoms, healthcare, and energy and utilities.

61% of organisations have redesigned roles within or across functions to make them AI-enabled. 24% are creating new roles focused specifically on AI management. Only a third have fully implemented training programmes to help employees work effectively with AI tools, Kyndryl said.

The Pacesetters Pulling Ahead

Kyndryl labelled 9% of respondents as “Pacesetters” because they had redesigned roles around AI, managed the workforce transition, and built employee readiness. Those organisations were 1.5 times more likely than the rest to report AI-related revenue growth. They were 1.6 times more likely to report improved innovation in products and services.

Pacesetters’ edge is in execution. They redesigned roles, invested in workforce development, implemented change management, and built governance frameworks that help employees trust and adopt AI. 92% of tech executives see managing AI agents as a core 2031 skill. The same survey found only 24% of tech executives said their organisations were scaling AI for ROI.

95.5% of organisations told AvePoint they had taken one or more actions to mitigate AI agent security concerns in the past 12 months. 8.3% of organisations did nothing on AI security in 2025; the figure dropped to 2.5% in 2026. 79.5% of AvePoint respondents put securing data used for AI training as their top future investment priority.

Trust Is Falling Behind Agent Autonomy

AI agents are being given more authority than ever. 81% of organisations told Kyndryl they expect autonomous agents to make decisions with material business impact within the next 12 months. Only 25% said they completely trust AI systems operating without human oversight. 46.9% of global employees rely on AI agents weekly or daily, AvePoint said.

Only 33% of Kyndryl respondents said they have policies defining which decisions AI can and cannot make. 27% said they used a registry and monitoring capability for all AI systems. Earlier reporting on AI reaching core systems before governance caught up described the same sequence in a separate survey.

A Wave of Security Incidents Few Saw Coming

AvePoint, a data protection vendor, polled 750 enterprise leaders in June 2026. 88.4% of organisations said they experienced at least one AI agent-related security breach in the past 12 months. 86% had postponed AI agent rollouts by an average of almost six months because of data security and management concerns. For generative AI deployments, the postponement rate was 86.9%.

The press release for the 750-leader report was issued on June 29, 2026. 89.5% of organisations reported at least one generative AI security breach in 2026. The report was conducted in partnership with Osterman Research.

82.7% of AvePoint respondents said they were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ confident in their ability to prevent unauthorised AI-related data access. 72% of the ‘very confident’ group had experienced an incident in the past year. 62% of the ‘extremely confident’ group had experienced one too. 75.1% of organisations reported at least one generative AI security breach in 2025. The figure rose to 89.5% in 2026.

21.1% of organisations said they did not know whether employees were using unsanctioned tools to create AI agents. 17.6% lacked visibility into whether workers were using unauthorised generative AI tools, nearly triple the 6.3% reported in 2025. Cutting headcount ranked last among the reasons organisations gave for adopting agents, AvePoint said. The percentage of organisations doing nothing on AI security dropped from 8.3% in 2025 to 2.5% in 2026.

• 88.4% of organisations experienced at least one AI agent-related security breach in the past 12 months.
• 86% postponed AI agent rollouts by an average of almost six months.
• 82.7% said they were very or extremely confident in preventing unauthorised AI access.
• 72% of the ‘very confident’ group had still experienced an incident in the past year.
• 21.1% did not know whether employees were using unsanctioned AI agent tools.

AI-Generated Data Is Now Most of the Pile

AvePoint said 35.5% of enterprise data is now generated by AI assistants. That share is expected to rise to 42.1% within 12 months. 84.1% of organisations manage at least one petabyte of data.

Nearly half of global employees are already relying on AI agents weekly or daily, and organisations are deploying agents faster than they are building the foundations required to trust them. The constraint on enterprise AI is no longer model capability, but whether organisations have built a trust layer: the data visibility, governance, and enforceable control required to scale AI with confidence. Without it, speed of deployment becomes speed of exposure.

Tianyi Jiang, AvePoint’s chief executive officer and co-founder, gave that statement with the company’s 2026 State of AI report. 78.1% of organisations told AvePoint that at least half of their information was more than five years old, up from 70.7% in 2025. AvePoint wrote that governance failures compound when AI systems consume and act on AI-generated content. Cybersecurity response is the top-rated AI agent use case, AvePoint said, but also among the highest-risk deployments when data protection and governance foundations are not in place.

46.9% of global employees rely on AI agents weekly or daily, AvePoint said. The report was conducted in partnership with Osterman Research across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Organisations expect AI agents to replace more than 25% of human work within 12 months and nearly half within five years.

Where Investment Is Heading

95.5% of organisations told AvePoint they had taken one or more actions to mitigate AI agent security concerns in the past 12 months. The percentage of organisations doing nothing dropped from 8.3% in 2025 to 2.5% in 2026. Third-party governance tools that monitor agent actions for policy alignment top the planned investment list for the next 12 months. Securing data used for AI training ranked as the top future investment priority, at 79.5%.

Kyndryl’s findings centred on workforce readiness and trust in AI systems. AvePoint’s findings centred on data security, visibility, and incident rates. AI agents to form 36% of core tech teams by 2027. AvePoint’s respondents expect AI agents to replace more than 25% of human work within 12 months and nearly half within five years. Both surveys were released within 30 days of each other.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an AI agent, and how do the surveys define one?

An AI agent executes tasks and makes decisions on its own, distinct from an AI assistant that only generates content. Both surveys use that boundary to report agent-specific figures separately. AvePoint’s data shows 46.9% of global employees now rely on agents weekly or daily.

What did Kyndryl classify as a Pacesetter?

9% of Kyndryl’s 1,100 respondents qualified as Pacesetters after meeting three criteria: redesigning roles around AI, managing the workforce transition, and building employee readiness. Pacesetters were 1.5 times more likely than the rest to report AI-related revenue growth and 1.6 times more likely to report improved innovation in products and services.

What counted as an AI agent security incident in the AvePoint survey?

AvePoint’s State of AI 2026 report counted any AI agent-related security breach in the past 12 months. 88.4% of the 750 enterprise leaders surveyed said they had experienced at least one such incident, and 89.5% reported a generative AI-related security breach in 2026.

Why are organisations adopting AI agents if their workforces are not ready?

AvePoint found cutting headcount ranked last among the reasons organisations are adopting AI agents. The top reasons were reducing manual effort, shortening process times, and redirecting employees toward higher-value work. Kyndryl found 81% of organisations expect autonomous agents to make decisions with material business impact within the next 12 months.

What investment priorities did the surveys flag for the next 12 months?

AvePoint’s respondents put securing data used for AI training as the top future investment priority at 79.5%. Third-party governance tools that monitor agent actions for policy alignment topped the planned investment list. Kyndryl’s Pacesetters pointed to three operational moves: redesigning roles around AI, investing in workforce development, and building governance frameworks that help employees trust and adopt AI.