AI gap widens between bosses & workers, Vertage finds

Vertage has published research showing a wide gap between how business leaders and workers view AI's impact on organisational capacity. The study also found that while most large companies define work around outcomes, few are ready to deliver that model consistently.

The survey covered 800 enterprise decision-makers and 1,200 workers across six markets, including Australia. Globally, 71% of leaders said AI had increased capacity in their organisation, compared with 43% of workers. While 74% of enterprises said they define significant work around outcomes, only 15% said they were ready to deliver on that consistently.

In Australia, the divide appeared more pronounced in several areas. While 78% of Australian enterprise leaders said AI had increased capacity, 66% said decisions take too long to implement once priorities change, the highest share among the markets surveyed.

Other Australian findings pointed to a broader shift in how work is organised. The report found that 71% of Australian respondents now pay more contractors and suppliers for results rather than hours, ahead of the global figure of 61%. It also found that 82% said external talent is a core part of delivery, compared with 70% globally.

The data also suggested that measurement remains a weak point. Only 44% of Australian respondents said they regularly measure what AI is delivering, although 78% said they plan to invest more in measuring it over the next year.

Skills shortages were another theme. Half of Australian respondents said they lacked the right skills for their last major change effort, compared with 44% globally.

Outcome gap

Vertage framed the findings around what it called outcome readiness, defined through structural, operational and cultural factors. According to the research, companies better prepared in those areas reported stronger customer satisfaction, stronger delivery of strategic goals and faster conversion of opportunities into value than other businesses.

Outcome-ready businesses were more likely to plan delivery through a single strategy spanning employees, partners, suppliers and AI. They were also more likely to measure the full cost of delivering outcomes.

One of the central findings was that AI adoption has moved faster than changes to job design and operating models. The report linked the 28-point gap between leaders and workers on AI-created capacity to many organisations failing to decide how freed-up time should be used.

"AI adoption no longer separates strong businesses from the rest. Outcome readiness does," said Edzard Overbeek, Group Chief Executive Officer of Vertage.

"The strongest businesses organise people, partners and AI around a clear result, and they keep human judgment at the center," Overbeek said.

Culture and control

The research argued that culture plays a central role in whether businesses can make effective use of AI and more flexible delivery models. It pointed to employee clarity, trust and authority to adapt work as important features of organisations that perform better against outcome measures.

According to the study, 69% of employees in outcome-ready enterprises understand their contribution and can adapt how they work, compared with 34% elsewhere. The report also cited examples from interviewed leaders, including businesses that gave cross-functional teams authority to deliver defined outcomes in 90-day sprints and organisations that made challenging AI output part of employees' roles.

"Outcome readiness starts with culture," Overbeek said.

"People need to understand the result, know where they can challenge and feel trusted to use their judgment. That clarity helps businesses make better choices about how work gets done," he said.

The report was based on an online survey conducted by Opinium Research among enterprise decision-makers and fixed-term contract workers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, Australia, India, Belgium and the Netherlands. It also included in-depth interviews with senior client-side decision-makers involved in procurement, technology, workforce strategy, transformation and major project delivery.

Sarah White, Founder and Managing Director of Lemon, which contributed to the report, said many organisations were still in transition rather than at the end of it.

"The most important takeaway from this research isn't that only a small percentage of organisations are outcome ready. It's that the vast majority are navigating a fundamental change in how work is organised. No business needs to have the entire future operating model figured out today. What matters is understanding where the gaps exist and beginning to make deliberate changes," White said.