Austin-based HCM and workforce management advisory firm Improv has launched an anonymous industry benchmark survey to measure how organizations are actually adopting AI in HR, human capital management, and workforce management. The research initiative, called The State of AI in HCM and WFM, targets a gap Improv identified in the market: no credible, publicly available benchmark currently shows AI adoption broken out by platform, industry, and company size.
The survey is open to HR, HCM, and WFM professionals across industries and company sizes. It takes about three minutes to complete and covers 16 questions across four areas: current AI usage and implementation ownership, governance policy and strategy ownership, outlook and sentiment, and the most high-value starting points for AI deployment. All responses are anonymous and reported only in aggregate.
What the survey will measure
The research focuses on four specific questions: which AI use cases teams run in production versus which are still being piloted; how adoption differs across platforms like UKG, Workday, ADP, and SAP; what is actually slowing teams down, whether budget constraints, skills gaps, or trust issues; and whether governance policy is keeping pace with adoption on the ground.
The project will produce six outputs for participating organizations, including a baseline on adoption segmented by size, industry, and platform; platform-level data on user perception of AI readiness; the dominant adoption barrier; a quantified picture of how far governance policy trails actual deployment; and a ranked list of problems practitioners most want AI to solve, drawn from open-ended responses.
Respondents who provide a business email receive the finished benchmark report before it goes public. The survey is available on the Improv AI in HR Survey page.
A market without cross-platform benchmarks
Most industry benchmarking efforts are limited by platform boundaries, according to Improv. Because the firm works across UKG, Workday, ADP, and other platforms in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, public sector, and service and distribution, it positions itself to design research that cuts across those barriers.
"AI is moving through HR, HCM, and WFM faster than almost any other part of the business," said Vince Jackson, President of Improv. "Some organizations are already capturing real advantage from it. Others are still deciding where to start. The honest answer is that nobody has published a clear picture of where the market actually stands, broken out by company size, industry, and platform. That is the gap this research closes."
For HR professionals and operations leaders, the research addresses a practical question: where do we stand compared to our peers? Without a cross-platform benchmark, that comparison has been guesswork. For practitioners, concrete baseline data provides a clearer case internally for where AI efforts should go, and whether governance structures need to catch up to deployment.
The survey also asks respondents to identify the most valuable starting points for AI, and ranks them in the report. For executives that are trying to justify AI budgets, the dominant barrier - whether budget, skills, or trust - matters for more than a benchmarking exercise. It shapes which initiatives will have support and which ones will stall.
Improving the quality of go-forward decisions is the point. The report gives organizations a data-backed reference point for conversations about AI spend, platform readiness, and governance priorities. For HR and operations leadership, the return on a three-minute survey is access to that benchmark before the public release.
For HR and operations executives, the takeaway is straightforward: the study creates a baseline for adoption, and the survey asks these questions differently than vendor marketing does. The outputs are broken out by platform and company size, which gives HR teams a practical comparison for where they stand.
The governance piece matters too. The survey measured whether policy is keeping pace with deployment, and the output will show how far governance lags. For executives responsible for risk, that's the gap that surfaces board-level questioning. Now there's a way to quantify it against peers.
Why this matters for managers
For managers in HR and operations, the value of this survey is the baseline it will provide. Every spending decision on AI tools carries hidden risk. This benchmark gives line managers a concrete reference point for what other teams are doing. Improv will publish the aggregated findings after the survey closes, and direct participants get the report early.
Managers can also expect the report to address a common pain point: what problem do teams want AI to solve first. The open-ended responses will be ranked, which gives practical direction to teams that feel pulled in several directions. Filling these gaps in knowledge has been a bottleneck; this survey answers core questions directly.
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