More than half of business leaders who made employees redundant after introducing artificial intelligence now acknowledge that they made the wrong decision, highlighting growing caution over attempts to replace human workers with technology.

Research by workforce planning platform Orgvue found that 39% of surveyed business leaders had made employees redundant as a result of deploying AI. Among those leaders, 55% subsequently admitted that their redundancy decisions had been wrong.

The findings suggest that corporate thinking around artificial intelligence is shifting from wholesale job replacement towards a more balanced model in which technology complements human capabilities.

Oliver Shaw, CEO of Orgvue, said businesses were learning that replacing employees with AI without fully understanding the consequences for their workforce could produce damaging results. He emphasised that meaningful productivity gains require deliberate investment in skills and effective collaboration between people and technology.

The international study surveyed more than 1,100 C-suite and senior business leaders across several markets. It also found that 80% of leaders planned to reskill employees to work effectively with AI, while 41% had increased learning and development budgets.

Concerns remain around organisations adopting AI without sufficient expertise. Some 35% cited a lack of AI expertise as a major deployment barrier, while one-quarter of leaders said they were unsure which jobs could benefit most from artificial intelligence.

More recent Orgvue research has reinforced the message. Its 2026 analysis of Fortune 500 companies found that human capital investment continued to provide a more sustainable route to growth than simply reducing employee numbers in pursuit of AI-led efficiencies.

The emerging lesson for businesses is increasingly clear: the competitive advantage of AI may lie not in eliminating people, but in combining automation with human judgement, creativity, experience and decision-making.