A newly-published survey about business’ attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI) by Gallagher Re suggests that people-related risks are top of mind for businesses as they work on AI integration: More than a quarter of leaders surveyed for the firm’s 2025 Attitudes to AI Adoption and Risk worry about AI’s impact on employee engagement and morale, while 20 per cent say reduced leadership trust is a risk associated with using AI in their businesses.

“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,” the firm writes.

Reskill and upskill 

At the same time, the paper would appear to encourage leaders not to shy away from the transformation. “We’ve seen an acceleration of adoption. If you don’t reskill and upskill your people on how to use this technology, they’re just going to use it ungoverned,” says Ben Warren, Gallagher’s head of digital transformation and AI.

Nearly half of respondents said their firms are offering to train employees on the use of AI tools; 34 per cent have offered to reskill employees whose roles are being replaced by AI. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they had job protection strategies as part of their AI implementation plans, driven mainly by the desire to retain and promote creativity, according to 38 per cent of respondents.

Meanwhile risk managers will likely appreciate that a growing number of business leaders are beginning to appreciate other risks related to AI adoption, as well. Of the 900 decision makers surveyed from around the world, 77 per cent said their business understands the risk connected with AI, 42 per cent said they’ve strengthened their cybersecurity practices and 41 per cent are reassessing privacy and data security measures to mitigate the risks posed.

Other findings:

  • 30 per cent of decisions makers say their companies lack the expertise to implement and manage AI systems effectively. 
  • 30 per cent are concerned about the ethical use of AI.
  • 27 per cent were concerned about compliance issues.
  • 26 per cent said building and maintaining the infrastructure required to support AI can be costly and demanding. 

Despite these challenges and concerns, communication of the risks to a company’s workforce dipped from 84 per cent in the first survey last year, to 78 per cent in the 2025 iteration. “Last year, a lot of organizations carried out a few communications campaigns across their teams and organizations then stepped away,” Warren says. “But it’s not a one-and-done exercise.”