AI news ·
Workers use personal AI tools on the job as employer training lags
Forty-one percent of workers receive no AI training, prompting 76% to use unapproved tools. This creates data security risks and sidelines HR from governance.
Forty-one percent of workers say their employer has given them no tools, training or guidance for using artificial intelligence on the job, according to a new survey from Resume Now. The resulting vacuum has led 76% of employees to adopt their own AI tools for work, a pattern researchers call "bring your own AI" (BYOAI). This gap between adoption and oversight is creating serious security and compliance risks for organizations, and HR departments are often sidelined in the efforts to address it.
The survey of 1,020 employees, conducted in May 2026, found that only 21% of workers had been given clear AI guidelines tailored to their specific role. More than half (52%) said their employer supplies no AI tools at all or only free, publicly available ones. Just 19% reported receiving dedicated training with time and resources to build AI skills. Without that structure, the report concludes, the burden of learning to use AI safely falls on individual employees.
Security risks from unapproved tools
Separate research commissioned by identity firm Okta shows the consequences of this unsupervised use. More than half of businesses experienced an AI-related security incident or close call in the past year. Despite that, most executives voiced confidence in their own oversight. Harish Peri, Okta's senior vice president for AI security, said 52% of workers use AI tools their employer hasn't approved, and many have shared confidential business records-including employee data-with outside systems.
"Security and compliance teams can't govern the usage of AI tools they don't know are being used. Organisations must implement an effective AI governance framework that prioritizes identity-centric controls, automated discovery, and secure sandboxes to test drive AI tools safely," Peri said.
A 2026 survey of office professionals by Wakefield Research for PagerDuty echoed these findings: 43% had entered work correspondence into public AI tools outside company systems. Roughly a third had shared customer or financial data with those same tools.
HR often excluded from AI governance
Even as AI use spreads, many HR teams are not part of the decision-making process. SHRM's 2026 research found that legal and compliance teams primarily lead AI governance, while HR is involved less often. Over half of organizations (52%) do not involve HR directly or collaboratively in their overall AI strategy. Additionally, 57% of HR professionals working in states with AI employment laws said they were not aware those laws existed.
Peri warned that outright bans on AI tools tend to backfire, pushing employee use further out of view rather than stopping it. SHRM has called on Congress to create a single national framework for workplace AI rules, replacing the current state-by-state patchwork, and to invest more in workforce training.
Why this matters for HR teams
The BYOAI trend means HR leaders face a dual challenge: they must protect their organizations from the risks of unapproved AI use while also working to educate employees and influence governance. Without a seat at the AI governance table, HR risks being blindsided by compliance failures and data breaches that affect the workforce. HR professionals who want to close this gap can start by building their own AI literacy. For those seeking structured guidance, AI Learning Path for HR Managers offers training on AI recruitment, workforce analytics, and talent management-skills that are increasingly critical as AI becomes embedded in how people work.