As AI adoption spreads, productivity gains remain elusive. Companies are spending significant time fixing, verifying and reworking AI outputs, according to a recent Workday study. The report, “Beyond Productivity: Measuring the Real Value of AI,” said only 14% of employees consistently achieve net-positive outcomes from AI use. For channel partners, the “AI tax” companies are paying translates into opportunities to step in as strategic advisors who can turn AI usage into real, measurable value.
AI misses are partner opportunities
In many cases, AI isn’t living up to its marketing hype. Workday found that AI time savings are offset by rework about 37% of the time. Put another way, for every 10 hours of efficiency gained, nearly four hours are lost to fixing output, Workday noted. Those fixes tend to involve rewriting content and double-checking information, underscoring that many of the models on the market just aren’t reliable enough to trust without human oversight.
For channel partners, that’s a chance to shine.
“AI success depends as much on people as it does on technology,” Matt Brandt, SVP of Workday’s Global Partners organization, told Channel Dive. “This creates a massive opportunity for channel partners to act as strategic advisors — not just by identifying the right tools for growth, but by guiding the workforce training needed to master them. While partners have always played this role, the rapid rush toward AI makes their expertise more essential than ever.”
Why AI productivity doesn’t add up
One of the main takeaways partners should understand is that Workday found that many companies are measuring the wrong markers around AI. The standard ROI narrative still revolves around gross efficiency: hours saved, tasks automated, headcount avoided. Workday argues that those metrics can obscure what is actually happening in real workflows, where speed often comes before quality, context and confidence.
The company, which specializes in software for HR and finance, surveyed 3,200 leaders and employees at organizations around the world with at least $100 million in annual revenue. On the surface, AI adoption looks strong. Nearly nine in 10 employees use AI at least a few times a week, and almost half (46%) use it daily. More than three-quarters said AI makes them more productive, with most reporting saving one to seven hours per week.
But, those time savings are not translating into clear outcomes. The most enthusiastic AI users seem to carry the heaviest burden. Here, 77% are checking AI output with more rigor than human work, which creates a significant hidden workload of verification, Workday said. The company further discovered that, at one end of the AI usage spectrum, some employees use AI strategically and see real gains. At the other end, confident, frequent users spend so much time cleaning up AI output that their net productivity suffers.
Furthermore, the rework problem is not evenly distributed. Younger employees, particularly those ages 25 to 34, are more likely to fall into high-rework patterns. Departmental function matters, too. IT roles often convert AI use into net gains more effectively, while HR and other people-centric functions experience heavier rework loads, where accuracy and nuance are nonnegotiable, Workday said. Much of the problem goes back to internal structure. Most organizations are layering AI onto roles that were never redesigned to accommodate it, “forcing employees to use 2025 tools within 2015 job structures,” Workday said in its report. To that point, nearly nine in 10 companies say fewer than half of their job roles have been updated to reflect AI capabilities.
Training represents another gap. Leaders overwhelmingly told Workday they prioritize skills development. However, employees doing the most AI rework were the least likely to report increased access to training. Even when companies reinvest AI-driven savings, the money skews toward technology and infrastructure rather than workforce enablement, Workday said.
The company uncovered a similar trend around time reinvestment, pinpointing relatively little focus on upskilling. Indeed, only 64% of organizations in North America said they reinvest AI savings into people, compared to 84% in EMEA and 89% in APAC. In regions where companies reinvest in their people, employees are more likely to convert time savings into sustained improvements rather than rework, according to Workday’s research.
AI growing pains play to partner strengths
For the channel, this insight likely strikes familiar notes. New technology arrives with big promises, adoption spikes and then reality sets in. Turns out, the hard work lies not so much in deployment, but in integration, governance and change management. AI is simply the latest, and perhaps most visible, example.
As such, Workday’s new report effectively hands partners a positioning blueprint. If generic AI tools push trust, accuracy and repeatability onto individual users, then partners can step in as the solution to those growing pains. That means helping customers redesign roles, embed AI into workflows, establish validation standards and train employees where friction is highest.
The shift also means reframing success. Instead of celebrating hours saved, partners can help customers measure net value, such as time saved minus time lost to rework. That alone can change how AI investments are prioritized and where services deliver the most impact.
