Among Canadian businesses using generative AI, SMEs with fewer than five employees show 39% usage rates, rising to 60% and above among those with 20 to 49 employees. The tools are accessible. The organizational capability to extract value from them is not evenly distributed.
For HR leaders in larger organizations, this creates a specific responsibility. The productivity gains from AI will accrue disproportionately to firms that can build the surrounding infrastructure – training programmes, workflow redesign, data governance, change management. In a country where most employers cannot afford to do that, the ones who can have an obligation to do it well.
The training gap inside the adoption gap
Among Canadian businesses that reported using AI in Q2 2025, the most common application was text analytics (35.7%), followed by data analytics (26.4%) and virtual agents or chatbots (24.8%). These are the lighter-touch applications – useful, but not transformative. The more demanding uses that drive genuine productivity gains require both technology and organizational change.
As HCAMag has reported on the AI training gap, a 2024 Future Skills Centre survey found 44% of employed Canadians using AI tools at work have received no formal training. The Ipsos AI Monitor 2026 found 67% of Canadians say AI makes them nervous – among the highest rates globally. Just 20% believe AI will improve their job.
ATB Financial gave its entire workforce access to AI tools early and saw quick individual adoption. Converting that into organisational productivity proved harder. “We’ve definitely seen huge individual productivity uptake,” says Tara Lockyer, Chief People, Culture, Brand and Communications Officer at ATB Financial. “But we’re having a really hard time harnessing that for the organization – how do you harness that productivity at the team level or at the line of business level so that it can be redeployed? We haven’t figured that one out at all.”