I promises to automate workflows and save employees time. But a lack of alignment among company leaders may keep those productivity gains out of reach.
While 85% of C-suite executives report deploying AI across their organizations, only 54% of managers say AI is a top priority, according to new data from Nitro, a document software company, which surveyed more than 1,300 executives, managers, and directors across the US, UK, and Canada. Barely half of managers say AI has reached at least some of their own workflows, revealing a disconnect between executive aspirations and day-to-day realities. "At an executive level, it can be about the message: 'Yes, we are using AI,'" Cormac Whelan, Nitro's CEO, told The Deep View. "At the manager level, it is often about solving for the next level of detail on how we are using it."
Among managers whose teams have adopted AI, 37% primarily rely on standalone AI tools, such as copying and pasting content into ChatGPT. Only 12% say AI is fully embedded into their document workflows.
Much of the work remains manual. More than half of managers say employees spend the most time extracting data from documents into spreadsheets, followed by editing and formatting files, managing documents, summarizing content, and redacting sensitive information. Because of that, 62% of managers say employees spend six or more hours each week on manual document tasks, with nearly a third estimating those workloads consume 11 or more hours.
"If AI isn't built into the workflows, work surfaces, and systems people use every day, with the outcome in mind, it doesn't matter how many tools you buy or how many tokens [you burn] or how much budget you commit," Whelan said. "The work stays manual."
The findings underscore a growing challenge in enterprise AI adoption. Businesses are betting big on AI to boost productivity and cut costs, but many managers appear to be taking a more measured approach to rolling it out across their teams.
Managers cite security and trust as their biggest barriers to AI adoption, followed by integration complexity and implementation costs. More than half also say sensitive documents are being uploaded to public AI tools, while only 43% report having clear, actively enforced AI policies.
To close the gap, the findings suggest that companies need AI embedded into the software and workflows employees already use every day, with security and governance baked in from the start. Otherwise, AI risks become another set of tools rather than the productivity engine executives expect it to be.
Our Deeper View #
AI adoption is as much an organizational challenge as it is a technological one. While executives focus on transforming the business to appease stakeholders, managers are responsible for making AI work day-to-day. As layoffs shrink middle management and spread teams thin, many are juggling a mounting list of responsibilities. They're not only expected to lead their teams, but also figure out how to integrate AI into existing workflows and systems. Closing that gap goes beyond creating an AI strategy. It requires building a culture where employees have the time, training, and trust to experiment with AI out of curiosity rather than purely top-down pressure.