AI excitement ‘at all-time highs’; integration, not so much  

While excitement around AI continues to soar, many organisations are still stepping into the trap of isolated usage cases – stalling overall implementation.

The new State of AI at Work: Australia 2025 Report, conducted by Asana, has revealed that despite their exhilaration for artificial intelligence, many continually fail to set a pathway toward organisational adoption. This is leading to a plateau in overall usage, with just 46 per cent of workers using AI weekly, basically unchanged from 47 per cent in the previous year.

The grandiose plans of accelerating this process – which we heard from a number of businesses in 2024 – have seemingly stalled at the starting blocks, with 86 per cent of workers agreeing that their organisation remains in the early stages of AI implementation. A mere 14 per cent reported successful integration across the operations.

“While AI excitement is at all-time highs, organisations struggle to move beyond isolated use cases, and nearly half of all executives (44 per cent) report outdated work practices. Adding AI to the mix without a clear strategy just creates further complexity,” said Lindsay Buydos, general manager for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Asana.

“Business leaders should take a holistic view of improving work processes with AI supporting this journey in a scalable way.”

It’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to AI integration, however, as “AI scalers” – meaning organisations that have implemented AI across multiple workflows – can offer optimism despite the data findings.

These organisations have carried out their integration through a holistic framework, with an approach that prioritises how the technology can empower teams and remedy other monotonous roadblocks.

Close to three in four (72 per cent) of workers prefer their organisation to adopt a standardised set of collaboration tools, an increase of 6 per cent from the previous year.

“I think there’s interest and a real drive from companies to use AI effectively, to improve the quality and velocity of employee output. They just don’t know where and how to get started with AI in a way that actually helps in the day-to-day,” said Buydos.

“You need to reimagine your business processes and cross-functional workflows and use AI to help with the menial, repetitive tasks that keep us all from doing the more important stuff.”

The report offered insights as to how “AI scalers” approach their integration:

• Build a coordination layer first, standardising collaboration tools.

• Redesign how work flows to eliminate bottlenecks and then use AI to automate intelligently.

• Strengthen resilience by embedding AI across workflows – not just in isolated tools.

• Protect capacity by eliminating low-value work, using AI to reduce noise, guard focus time, and prevent burnout.