The AI axe just keeps swinging, with new figures from Deloitte showing that more than a third of firms expect at least 10% of their jobs to be fully automated in the next year – but rather than redesign work around AI, most are concentrating on improving AI fluency.

Polling more than 3,200 enterprise and IT leaders around the world, Deloitte’s latest State of AI in the Enterprise survey found that most companies (84%) have not rewired existing roles or workflows to meaningfully integrate AI capabilities.

Despite most execs pointing to skills shortages as the biggest barrier to their AI ambitions, fewer than half are making significant adjustments to their talent planning, with most (53%) simply focusing on bringing staff up to speed on the basics of AI tools.

According to Deloitte, this lack of talent development will hit entry-level and task-aligned roles the hardest, with 53% of firms considering flattening their organisational structure as AI reduces the need for traditional layers of management around large teams, though just 16% have made that move so far.

The study found that although business leaders feel strategically ready for AI, their infrastructure and talent strategies are lagging. While 42% of firms claim their AI adoption strategy is in strong shape, and 30% feeling the same about risk and governance, confidence dips sharply when it comes to the data foundations and skills needed to support it. 

Likewise, while workforce access to AI has expanded by 50% in just one year, with 11% of leading companies providing employees with near-universal access to sanctioned AI tools, fewer than 60% use it in their daily workflow, a pattern that remains unchanged from last year. 

Deloitte said this gap shows how hard it is to modernise complex, globally exposed businesses at the speed technology is now moving, leaving them at the “untapped edge” of AI’s potential.

This gap is only set to widen with the adoption of agentic systems, as Deloitte found just one in five enterprise firms currently reporting having a mature model for the governance of autonomous agents.

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Urgent work is needed to ensure that agentic AI adoption will not outpace oversight. Already, a quarter of companies (23%) are using agentic AI at least moderately, but within the next two years, the tech is expected to become nearly ubiquitous, with 74% of companies expecting at least moderate use of autonomous systems as a core part of their operations. 

The AI risks companies are most worried about all relate to governance, with data privacy and security topping the list at 73%, followed by legal, intellectual property, and regulatory compliance (50%), governance capabilities and oversight (46%), and model quality, consistency, and explainability (46%). 

“Whether it’s figuring out how to capitalise on the latest cutting-edge innovations, making the leap from pilots to large-scale deployment, or using AI to create an enduring competitive advantage, enterprises around the world are on the edge of transforming themselves with AI,” said Deloitte.

“The challenge now is activation: bridging the gap from tool access to meaningful adoption, moving beyond experimentation to operationalising AI at scale, embedding AI into core business processes – transforming technology potential into enterprise value.”

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