New workplace research exposes a disconnect between business leaders’ expectations and employees’ experiences, raising questions about AI integration, training and the real cost of digital transformation.
Artificial intelligence investments are creating additional work for many employees despite growing confidence among executives that the technology is delivering business value, according to new research from workplace technology company Ricoh.
The 2026 Workplace Technology Adoption Gap survey, released October 21, found that 53% of employees reported AI tools creating friction or additional work, while 91% of business decision-makers expressed confidence that their AI investments were delivering expected value.
The research surveyed 2,017 full-time workers across the United States and Canada in September, comprising 1,511 employees and 506 business or IT decision-makers.
The findings highlight a potential disconnect in enterprise AI adoption: technology investments may appear successful from a management perspective even when employees struggle to integrate new systems into daily work.
Workplace Technology Is Creating Additional Complexity
The survey results showed that 55% of employees said managing workplace technology interfered with their productivity.
Among four technology categories evaluated—including collaboration, information access and workflow management—AI tools delivered the lowest employee-reported productivity improvements.
Another 60% reported friction from workflow and process-management applications.
Ricoh North America president and CEO Carsten Bruhn emphasized that technology should simplify employees’ responsibilities rather than introduce additional complexity.
The results reflect employees’ perceptions, not independently measured productivity losses. The employee and executive respondents were also different groups, making the findings a comparison of perspectives rather than matched observations within individual organizations.
Employees Are Turning to Unapproved Tools
The problems extend beyond efficiency.
Ricoh found that 45% of employees used non-approved tools at least monthly to complete tasks more easily, raising concerns about information security and organizational oversight.
Although 90% of decision-makers believed employees received clear guidance on responsible AI use, only 66% of employees agreed.
Meanwhile, 81% of decision-makers acknowledged that their organizations invested in new workplace technology faster than they helped employees learn to use it effectively.
Bob Lamendola, Ricoh North America’s chief digital services and delivery officer, identified disconnected information systems and inefficient workflows as factors encouraging employees to bypass approved technology.
These findings suggest that enterprise AI security increasingly depends on usability as well as technical restrictions.
Research Suggests Productivity Can Become More Work
The survey follows research from UC Berkeley Haas examining how generative AI changed workplace behavior.
Researchers Xingqi Maggie Ye and Aruna Ranganathan conducted an eight-month ethnographic study at a technology company with approximately 200 employees.
They observed employees expanding their responsibilities, working across additional tasks and allowing AI-assisted activities to extend into breaks and evenings.
Their research suggests that faster task completion does not necessarily result in lighter workloads.
Enterprise AI Needs Better Measures of Success
For technology companies, the findings challenge conventional measures of successful AI adoption.
Installing software, increasing usage or reducing task-completion time may not demonstrate whether employees are experiencing meaningful improvements.
Product developers and enterprise technology leaders may need to measure workflow interruptions, duplicated effort, training effectiveness and employee satisfaction alongside financial returns.
The research points toward a broader industry problem: AI productivity gains depend not only on model capabilities, but on how effectively organizations redesign the work surrounding them.
