Gulf HR leaders face AI readiness gap: 93% explore AI, but only 1% are ready to scale

Gulf organisations are moving rapidly to explore artificial intelligence in human resources, but few have the infrastructure, talent and governance needed to scale it, highlighting a widening gap between AI ambition and enterprise readiness across the GCC.

According to Korn Ferry’s AI Adoption in Human Capital GCC 2026 report, 93% of organisations across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait are exploring, piloting or deploying AI in HR. Yet only 1% consider themselves fully ready to scale AI across the enterprise.

The findings are based on a Q1 2026 survey of 105 chief human resources officers across the six GCC markets.

While AI engagement is now widespread, adoption remains fragmented. Korn Ferry found that 49% of organisations are piloting AI in selected functions, while 20% have deployed AI across multiple business areas. Others remain at the exploration stage.

At the other end of the readiness spectrum, 30% of organisations say they are not ready to scale AI at all, while 46% describe themselves as only “somewhat ready”. The findings point to gaps in areas such as data governance, change management and cross-functional AI operating models.

One of the report’s key findings concerns who is responsible for AI strategy. Sixty per cent of GCC organisations place AI accountability with CIOs and IT leadership, while only 3% assign primary responsibility to HR leaders.

The imbalance is significant because AI adoption is increasingly reshaping workforce planning, job design, skills requirements, reskilling, performance management and employee experience.

For CHROs, the findings suggest that being responsible for the workforce impact of AI does not necessarily translate into having a formal role in AI decision-making.

This governance gap could make it harder for organisations to align technology investments with workforce requirements, particularly as AI moves from isolated experiments towards broader operational deployment.

Technology integration is the most frequently cited obstacle to scaling AI, with 61% of organisations identifying it as a challenge.

Legacy HR systems, fragmented data environments and disconnected workflows can make it difficult to integrate new AI applications into existing enterprise infrastructure.

Talent and skills represent another major constraint. Forty-four per cent of respondents say their organisations lack the AI-skilled talent required to operationalise their initiatives.

At the same time, 42% of GCC organisations are not hiring for dedicated AI roles, suggesting a disconnect between organisations’ AI ambitions and their workforce investment strategies.

Uncertainty over returns is another barrier, cited by 37% of organisations. Without clear measures for evaluating AI’s impact on areas such as hiring efficiency, productivity and costs, organisations may struggle to build stronger business cases for scaling AI.

Despite these challenges, productivity remains the dominant objective. Eighty-one per cent of organisations identify productivity gains as their primary goal for AI adoption.

The workforce perspective reveals a more nuanced picture of AI adoption. The Ipsos GCC People Pulse Q2 2026 survey, which covered 1,500 employees across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, found that 73% believe AI will strengthen their organisation’s competitiveness.

However, optimism is accompanied by concerns over employment security, with around half of respondents worried about the impact of AI on their jobs.

The survey also found that 54% of employees experience constant strain at work, adding a wellbeing dimension to the region’s AI transformation.

For HR leaders, the findings underline the importance of transparent communication, reskilling and employee participation as organisations introduce AI into everyday work.

The next stage of AI adoption could further test existing workforce and governance models. More than half of talent leaders across the Gulf plan to introduce autonomous AI agents into their teams during 2026, according to Korn Ferry. These agents could take on tasks including candidate sourcing, interview scheduling and initial screening with limited human intervention.

The shift could move AI beyond its role as a productivity tool towards becoming an active component of workforce capacity and team design.

That raises new questions for CHROs around workforce planning, accountability, skills, job redesign and the relationship between human employees and AI agents.

For GCC organisations, the challenge is therefore no longer simply whether to adopt AI. The more pressing question is whether they can build the organisational foundations required to scale it responsibly.

The findings suggest that closing the gap between the 93% engaging with AI and the 1% ready to scale will require HR to play a more central role in AI governance, alongside greater investment in AI literacy, data infrastructure, workforce reskilling and measurable business outcomes.