UK executives are far more willing to feed work documents into AI tools than the people who report to them, and the gap has clear security and privacy implications. According to a new survey of 2,000 UK adults, 74% of C-suite leaders are comfortable sharing work documents with AI for tasks such as marketing, translation and data analysis, while only 20% of non-management employees say the same.<\/p>\n
The research, published in Adobe Acrobat’s “The Rise of AI Documents in the Workplace” report, measured how AI tools are being used across UK organisations and how comfortable different groups of employees are with that use.<\/p>\n
Three numbers capture the divide:<\/p>\n
Adobe’s figures also show that, in most areas the report measured, AI adoption among non-management staff runs at least 50% lower than among company chiefs.<\/p>\n
Several factors appear to be at work. Senior leaders are typically measured on output and speed, and AI tools offer a direct route to both. The report found that a large share of C-suite respondents are using AI to save several hours a week and to run analytical work that would otherwise take longer by hand. When the benefit is concrete time saved, the temptation to push confidential material through a chatbot is strong.<\/p>\n
Junior and mid-level employees face a different calculation. Many have not been given clear guidance about which tools are approved or what they are allowed to upload. The report notes that 19% of respondents cite a lack of training or clear guidance as a concern, and almost two-thirds of non-management staff avoid AI tools entirely. Some of that avoidance is likely personal preference, but some of it points to a workplace signal: employees either believe AI use is off-limits, or fear that leaning on AI will expose gaps in their own work.<\/p>\n
The risk is that confidential information leaves the building through an AI prompt. Marketing plans, internal translations, and datasets handed to AI for analysis are exactly the kinds of documents that hold customer data, financial figures, or strategy material.<\/p>\n
Organisations adopting AI are aware of the problem. Adobe’s survey found that 22% of organisations adopting AI tools ranked data security and privacy as their biggest challenge, and 20% named accuracy and errors in AI outputs as their top concern.<\/p>\n
For IT, information security and compliance teams, the practical issue is that the most senior people in the company are the ones most likely to be sending sensitive material to AI systems, often without the same training, prompts, or oversight that frontline tools receive.<\/p>\n
The findings point to a few concrete steps:<\/p>\n
AI is now firmly embedded in how UK executives get their work done, and the time savings are real. The same survey that documents those gains also documents the gap between executive behaviour and employee behaviour, and the security concerns that come with it. Closing that gap is less about slowing AI adoption and more about giving every level of the organisation clear rules and training for how AI handles company documents.<\/p>\n
The study surveyed 2,000 UK adults and found that 74% of C-suite leaders are comfortable sharing work documents with AI tools, while only 20% of non-management employees say the same. It also found that 59% of non-management staff do not use AI at all.<\/p>\n
According to the report, C-suite leaders use AI for tasks including marketing, translating and data analysis. Within that group, 37% said AI saves them between three and five hours of work per week, and 35% said they use AI for analytical tasks.<\/p>\n
Adobe’s survey found that 22% of organisations adopting AI tools ranked data security and privacy as their biggest challenge, and 20% named accuracy and errors in AI outputs as their top concern. The report also notes that 19% of respondents pointed to a lack of training or clear guidance on AI use.<\/p>\n