Gartner HR Research Finds 77% of Board Members Expect AI to Deliver Productivity and Cost Savings, Yet Just 3% of Organizations Exceed Cost Savings Goals Via Productivity

Three-quarters of board members expect AI will deliver value in the form of productivity and cost savings, however 97% of organizations are unable to achieve desired cost savings through productivity alone, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

“Thirty-eight percent of companies are over budget on AI and 85% report they are planning to spend even more next year,” said CV Viverito, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner HR practice. “Ultimately, organizations will not generate cost savings from AI at this point. The greater opportunity is to use AI to do things that weren't possible before, such as shifting employee time into new capabilities, outcomes, and sources of growth.”

During the opening keynote today at Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo, taking place here through Wednesday, Gartner analysts discussed three key actions HR is taking to expand what is possible for their organizations through AI.

A July 2026 Gartner survey of 297 CHROs revealed that 78% of leaders have no alignment on where AI creates value.

“Without a shared view of where AI matters the most for the organization, there is a disconnect in how to position the workforce, and ultimately, how to capture value from AI investments,” said Arj Bagga, Vice President Analyst in the Gartner HR practice.

To concentrate AI on the work that brings the most value to the business, HR will need to align leaders on the top bets for AI value based on strategy and prepare for the employee implications of concentrating AI asymmetrically.

HR also has a critical role to play in AI governance, which is key to generating value. Leading organizations focus their governance efforts on both reducing and containing risk and defining and protecting value for the enterprise.

Most organizations are moving fast in an effort to keep up with how AI is evolving. These efforts require faster, deeper partnership with HR to discover new ways of working in an AI environment and protect future growth opportunities.

HR must work with their organizations to activate two routes to enable speed:

• Build and redesign self-serve tools for the business. Give business leaders enough structure to redesign work without waiting for HR to facilitate every single step.
• Scale AI expertise as an enterprise-wide asset. Rather than waiting to hire scarce expertise, organizations need to redirect the expertise that already exists to creating value.

“Many leaders see AI as a catalyst to work differently, but their approach is anchored in how work already gets done today,” said Bagga. “To imagine new possibilities, leaders must actively discover how work will get done in the future. They should start by considering the possibilities and then refining for reality.”   

A 2Q26 Gartner survey of 1,865 employees found that only 21% of time freed up by AI was redirected into more innovative work.

“There isn’t a struggle to create capacity; that’s happening already as organizations redesign work,” said Viverito. “What organizations are struggling with is how to make that capacity usable and redirecting it to what is valuable.”

Making capacity usable starts by ensuring employees have the skills needed to take on higher-value, AI-enabled work. Gartner analysts said that people succeeding with AI possess three skillsets that work together: 

1. AI fluency: Knowing when to trust technology, when to challenge it, and how to be accountable for the result
2. Human connection: Things like stakeholder management, communication, and teamwork
3. Human advantage: Skills including creativity, adaptability and learning agility 

HR can also help leaders design teams around complementary skills, such as pairing deep technical expertise with strong human judgment. Long-term, HR must develop more targeted learning interventions that rapidly address missing skills and experiences in real time.  

As AI frees up more capacity, organizations may redesign roles based on work that naturally goes together. HR will need to support the business as they merge previously separate roles into one new role while also identifying opportunities to do so during their workforce planning discussions.