Only 6% of talent and senior leaders believe their organisations’ top executives are fully prepared to lead AI-driven transformation, leaving middle managers expected to guide teams through a period of major workplace change.
The findings come from Korn Ferry’s Talent Trends 2027 report, based on a survey of more than 1,300 talent and senior leaders – including chief human resources officers, chief executives and board members – across more than 75 countries.
Two-thirds of respondents, or 66%, said managers would spend more time helping their teams through change than overseeing their day-to-day work.
The report also found that 77% believe capability gaps will become a greater challenge than talent shortages, while 78% said too few people were prepared for how work would be carried out in the future.
Middle managers face pressure from both directions
As businesses introduce AI tools, middle managers are increasingly required to translate senior leaders’ ambitions into practical changes for employees. Many are doing so while managing larger teams after years in which layers of management have been reduced.
“Managers will become the shock absorbers of the organization,” Cathi Rittelmann, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry, said in the report. “Their job will be to help teams keep moving, even when they can’t tell them exactly where things are heading.”
Susan De La Vega, Korn Ferry’s senior vice-president of global tech market and client experience, said AI transformation involved redesigning the workforce rather than simply introducing new technology. As the skills required in many roles change, she said, adaptability would become increasingly important.
De La Vega said companies often expected managers to handle uncertainty without receiving enough direction from senior leadership.
“Managers end up defending and communicating for AI mandates that they had no say in and little context,” she said.
When leaders subsequently change direction, employees can be forced to repeat work. De La Vega warned that weak communication could damage trust, increase disengagement and prompt valuable staff to leave.
Clear AI plans linked to higher engagement
Separate Gallup findings cited in the report suggest that clear communication about AI is associated with stronger employee engagement. In May, 25% of US employees said their organisations had communicated a clear plan for integrating AI, while 47% said their employers had begun introducing AI tools.
Among employees at organisations that had adopted AI, 43% of those who said their employer had communicated a clear integration plan were engaged at work. That compared with 28% among those who said no plan had been communicated, or who were unaware of one.
Managerial support was linked to a further difference. Engagement stood at 48% among employees who said their manager actively supported their team’s use of AI, compared with 30% among those who did not.
De La Vega said responsibility for preparing organisations should begin with senior leaders, who should learn to use the tools themselves and explain credibly what AI would and would not change.
She also called for training tailored to individual roles, noting that the needs of a finance analyst would differ from those of a data scientist. Employees should be given time to learn and space to experiment, including when early attempts failed.
Managers, she said, should be given the reasoning behind decisions before those decisions were communicated to their teams. Leaders should share what they knew, acknowledge uncertainty and set out the wider plan rather than wait for a completely finished strategy.
“The ‘shock absorbers’ need a system behind them to operate,” De La Vega said.
