Here’s a scenario we’ve heard more than a few times since we launched Emersen.
A leader tells us they’ve bought the licenses, ran the training, maybe hired someone to lead it. And when they look at who’s actually getting something out of it, it’s just a handful of people. Most people in the organization are using it to clean up emails, if they’re using it at all.
The president of one of our clients put it to us pretty directly. The gains are there and they are significant. They’re just sitting with a small group, and he isn’t sure what to do about everybody else.
Back in March, we called this the two-speed workforce and said every company would be dealing with it in six to eight months. Guess we’re about on schedule.
The questions in the room
What’s changed is the questions leaders are asking now. They’ve gotten sharper.
Do we need everybody? Should we put the AI budget behind the people who actually use it? Is training even worth it? How do we keep our best people from getting poached or getting frustrated and leaving?
Those are all legitimate questions. We’d just answer a different one first: why isn’t everybody else in?
Usage isn’t the whole story
Most of what leaders can see right now is usage. Who logged in, who’s burning through tokens, who built the cool automation everyone’s talking about. Who’s getting outcomes we didn’t even anticipate. That tells you who’s using AI. It doesn’t tell you who’s good at their job, and it says nothing about why everyone else isn’t using it.
Being AI-ready and being good at your job are two different things. The person at the top of the usage report isn’t automatically your best employee, and the person at the bottom might be the one holding your biggest client together.
When we talk to the employees who haven’t jumped in, the reasons are all over the place. Some don’t believe it works, or don’t believe it’ll last any longer than the last few initiatives that quietly went away. Some can’t see how it fits the work they do all day (and sometimes they’re right). And a lot of them are afraid. If the message from the top is that AI is going to make the team smaller, why would you volunteer to show everyone how much of your job it can do?
Another training session doesn’t fix any of that. Training answers how. Most of the people on the sidelines are stuck on why, or on what happens to them.
You can’t see that in a usage report. You have to ask people, and ask in a way where they’ll tell you the truth.
What to do then
The reasons people hold back aren’t on any dashboard. They live in conversations, and they’re different for every person.
That’s the gap we kept running into with clients, and it’s why we built Emersen.
Engagement surveys were built for a different world. Once a year, a few dozen questions, a score by department. They can tell you morale dipped. They can’t tell you that someone in finance stopped using the tools after a leadership meeting, or that a store manager would jump in tomorrow if someone showed her how it fits her week.
And this moment doesn’t move once a year. Where someone is in March isn’t where they’ll be in September. A new tool lands, a team gets reorganized, a leader says something in a town hall, and the picture changes.
What leaders need now is a continuous conversation. One that asks people, in their own words, what’s getting in the way, what they’re curious about, and what worries them. One that follows up, and connects what it hears across the whole organization.
That’s what Emersen does. Voice-led AI conversations with the depth of a focus group, at the scale of your entire workforce, that keep going as people move through the change. Instead of a score, leaders get the why: who’s ready, who’s curious but stuck, who needs a different kind of support, and what will actually help them move.
Most of everybody else isn’t resistant. They’re waiting for someone to ask.
The handful will be fine. Everybody else is where the real gains are.
Nikki + Chad