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As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) adoption reaches critical mass, employers are taking steps to protect jobs and retain essential skills.

Amid the digital transformation currently underway, recognition is growing that human intuition and creativity shouldn't be undervalued in the race to automate.

The multi-sector 2025 Attitudes to AI Adoption and Risk survey of 900 global decision-makers, conducted in December 2024, tracks year-over-year changes in attitudes toward AI, the extent and progress companies made toward adopting AI and AI's impact on their risk management and people strategies.

In our latest Gallagher global survey of business leaders, 85% report they've specifically introduced strategies for protecting employees' jobs as part of their AI adoption framework.

This protection reflects their belief that the AI transformation is more likely to augment rather than replace roles in the business, with the need to upskill staff so they can get the most from the technology.

At the same time, many firms are creating new jobs to bring in external skills and expertise. A third of survey respondents say their business is creating new roles — such as chief AI officers and data scientists — to target talent with specialist digital skills.

Other reasons for job protection strategies include the need to retain and promote creativity, which 38% of business leaders cited as a key priority. Other key drivers are the need to retain the human touch when interacting with clients and to reduce disruption to the workplace as AI is embedded.

A job-centric approach to AI adoption acknowledges that while AI may prove transformational for certain use cases, there's a risk it could overly disrupt the workplace. Integrating AI solutions across the board — and in areas that typically require a more intuitive, human touch — could create issues with workforce engagement and impact customer satisfaction.

Trust is a key issue. When asked about barriers to adoption, a quarter of respondents cited concerns about AI eroding employee trust in the company.

According to UK social charity IPPR, employers may want to take particular care to place a protective ring around roles that involve:
  • Negotiation or mentoring
  • Ethical sensitivity and moral judgments
  • Creative originality and artistic expression
  • High-stakes decision making
  • Complex problem solving in dynamic environments

The rapid growth of AI adoption

Any fear people have AI replacing them doesn't appear to be impeding AI adoption among the general population. In 2024, downloads of GenAI apps reached 1.5 billion, up from 800 million in 2023.1 And in February 2025, Apple's App Store listed GenAI apps as the top two free downloads.

If anything, the speed of adoption is leaving employers and regulators scrambling to catch up.

“
We've seen an acceleration of adoption, and if you don't reskill and upskill your people on how to use this technology, they're just going to use it ungoverned.
Ben Warren, Head of digital transformation and AI, Communication Consulting, Gallagher

 

Reskilling the workforce to get more from AI

Survey respondents acknowledge that an AI-skilled workforce is essential for AI adoption and long-term success. Developing a skilled workforce will require investment in both training and recruitment.

Nearly half of the respondents said their firms are offering training to upskill employees on AI tools, while 34% have offered to reskill employees whose roles are being replaced by AI.

"At the moment, it feels like we're in an okay place, in that we live in a world where it's normal to come to work and use a computer," says Drew Munn, strategy partner, Future of Work at Gallagher. "But we're not accounting for the fact that 90% of the roles people do in the world are augmented by the technology they've had to be trained to use, which isn't their core function within the business," he says.

“
We are effectively adding a new technology layer on top of every single role within the business, and saying, 'You have to do this as well — and you have to account for it'.
Drew Munn, strategy partner, Future of Work, Gallagher

 

The need for ongoing change management

According to Gallagher's global survey, more business leaders think AI will augment than replace existing roles within the workforce (42% versus 15%), while 28% expect a mix of both.

"There's a lot of fear out there at the moment, surrounding, 'Is AI going to take my job?' and 'Are we all going to be automated away?' The noise is making people quite fearful," says Ben Warren, head of digital transformation and AI at Gallagher. "So how do you mitigate that? You need education and change champions."

Another aspect to the AI transformation is that upheavals will be felt disproportionately across the organization, depending upon where the initial use cases are identified.

Functions being impacted more quickly by AI integration are typically the more routine tasks such as database management, scheduling and inventory control2. In the first phase of transformation, back-office jobs are most exposed to disruption.

However, once the primary use case for AI has been identified and implemented, the efficiency gains will make it tempting to mandate rollout to other business functions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the global survey found that IT departments are most likely to have adopted AI (58%), followed by customer service (37%) and finance (34%).

Taking a cross-divisional approach to integration and communication

The varying pace of integration within the organization means that workers will have a differing set of concerns and requirements at any one time. This difference has implications for internal communications and training needs.

Counterintuitively, the global survey found that communication relating to AI risks has dipped year over year to 78%, down from 84% 12 months prior.

"You're going to get hotspots within certain divisions at different stages, rather than across the whole organization, and your approach needs to be tailored to that," says Warren.

"Last year, a lot of organizations carried out a few communications campaigns across their teams and organizations and then stepped away. But it's not a one-and-done exercise. When we're working with partners externally, and within Gallagher, we're emphasizing the need for a full and ongoing change management program."

Companies are keeping employee jobs to encourage creativity, engage clients, solve complex problems, avoid security issues and reduce workplace disruption.

For many reasons, companies are opting to maintain a human touch instead of relying solely on AI:
Encouraging human-AI collaboration: GenAI is a tool that should be viewed as a complement to human capabilities rather than a full replacement for them. Companies should encourage collaboration when it comes to using AI in the workplace, not view the technology as an alternative.
Maintaining active oversight: It's important to maintain human oversight of AI processes to ensure quality and ethical standards are maintained.
Building trust through transparency: Transparency is key to maintaining trust in AI systems, so that customers and employees know when they're interacting with AI and understand how it and their data are being used.
Incorporating emotional intelligence: One of the core drawbacks of GenAI currently is its inability to understand and respond to human emotion. It can produce many useful things, but rarely with any depth of feeling or connection. Certain roles will always require empathy and emotional intelligence.

Published February 2025

Sources

1"2025 State of Mobile," Sensor Tower, Jan 2025.

2Jung, Carsten, and Bhargav Srinivasa-Desikan. "Transformed by AI: How Generative Artificial Intelligence Could Affect Work in the UK — And How to Manage It," Institute for Public Policy Research, Mar 2024. PDF file.