The confidence divide is stark. Three in four UK decision-makers say they feel confident using AI at work; that figure drops to 44 percent among junior employees. The gap is not simply about familiarity — it tracks access to formal support, which falls disproportionately on those lower in the hierarchy.
More than a third of employees (38 percent) say they have received little or no guidance on acceptable AI use in the workplace. Nearly as many (41 percent) say their organisation does not provide sufficient training on using AI safely. Self-teaching has become the default: 38 percent report it as their primary route to learning AI tools, compared with 23 percent who say their employer has trained them.
The pattern, TrustedTech argues, is creating conditions for both weaker AI returns and rising governance risk. Employees without clear policy or training are more likely to experiment unsupervised, which increases Shadow AI exposure — use of unapproved tools that sit outside the organisation's security and compliance perimeter.
Reticence to adopt is not mainly fear of job loss. About 24 percent of employees who are uncomfortable with AI tools cite a lack of knowledge as the reason, while 22 percent point to replacement anxiety. Employers are largely unaware of this: the research found that many organisations have prioritised deploying AI faster than they have invested in the workforce capability needed to use it productively.
Almost half of respondents (47 percent) believe organisations should take primary responsibility for building employees' AI skills, yet most report receiving little structured help.
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