AI Training Statistics: Adoption, Skills Gaps and Results

Around 35% of UK businesses with ten or more employees used AI in June 2026, but only 11% had given AI-related training to more than half of their staff, according to the Office for National Statistics. Northern Ireland tracks close to the UK on adoption, and Northern Ireland workforce surveys show the same gap between use and training.

Every figure on this page comes from official statistics or a named survey, shown with the group it measures, since a headline number about employees and one about businesses can both be accurate and still appear to contradict each other. The page is written for owners and managers deciding where training budget should go, and it brings the 2026 Northern Ireland research together in one place.

If you are planning sessions for a team based here, ProfileTree’s page on AI training Belfast sets out the formats delivered from the McSweeney Centre.

The Headline Figures at a Glance

The most reliable UK data on AI and training now comes from official sources rather than vendor surveys. The strongest single source is the Office for National Statistics’ fortnightly business survey, which received responses from 38,637 businesses in June 2026 and published the results in its Artificial intelligence in UK businesses analysis. The table sets each figure beside the population it counts and what a business planning team should take from it.

UK Adoption Has Nearly Tripled since 2023, but Most Use Is Shallow

The share of UK businesses with ten or more employees using at least one AI technology rose from around 12% in September 2023 to around 35% in June 2026, according to the ONS. Size makes a large difference, with 28% of businesses with fewer than ten employees reporting AI use, compared with 49% of those with 250 or more. Sector matters as much, with 58% of information and communication businesses using AI against 13% in construction.

The depth of use has barely moved. Adopting businesses used an average of 1.4 AI technologies in late 2023 and about 1.6 in June 2026, and only 10% of adopters described their use as extensive. Large language models were the most common technology at 18% of businesses, followed by visual content creation at 16%. Only 15% of businesses said more than half of their employees use AI as part of daily work.

The gap between people and organisations is the most useful number for anyone planning training. In the same period, 55% of employees told the ONS they use AI for work or education, while 35% of businesses reported using it, which suggests a lot of use is informal and happening outside any agreed process. That gap is the practical case for structured AI training for UK businesses rather than another software licence, and it is also where staff concerns tend to surface, as the guide to resistance to AI adoption explains.

Training Has Not Kept Pace with Use

Only 11% of UK businesses with ten or more employees told the ONS that more than half of their workforce had received AI-related training. Training existing staff is still the most common way businesses bring AI skills in, reported by around 40% of medium and large businesses, while recruiting staff with AI skills ranges from about 2% of the smallest firms to 10% of those with 250 or more employees. Around 10% of businesses reported automating or replacing roles with AI.

Lack of Expertise Is the Barrier That Triggers Training

A substantial share of businesses, 41% of those with ten or more employees, reported no barriers to adopting AI in the previous three months. Among those that did, a lack of expertise was one of the most cited, reaching around 18% of businesses with 100 to 249 employees, while cost affected between 7% and 14% depending on size. The firms that recognise the skills problem tend to act on it, and around 62% of businesses citing a lack of expertise were training or retraining staff, compared with around 26% of businesses reporting no barriers.

The second figure deserves more attention than it usually gets, because a business that reports no barriers may simply not have noticed how its staff are using AI, and the Deloitte GenAI Workforce Survey suggests that is common. It found that 63% of UK workers had used generative AI for work, that 31% of those users had done so without their employer’s knowledge, and that half had received no formal training.

When the government expanded its AI Skills Boost programme in January 2026, it cited research showing that only 21% of UK workers feel confident using AI at work, and the Federation of Small Businesses said in the same announcement that 46% of small businesses do not yet have the skills or knowledge to use AI well.

The International Picture Points the Same Way

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, based on more than 1,000 employers, found that employers expect 39% of core skills to change by 2030 and that 63% see the skills gap as the main barrier to transforming their business. It projects 170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced by 2030, a net gain of 78 million, although that projection covers every force reshaping work and not AI alone. Gartner has separately forecast that generative AI will require 80% of the software engineering workforce to upskill through 2027, which matters to any business with an in-house development team.

Northern Ireland AI Training Statistics

Northern Ireland businesses use AI at close to the UK rate, but the workforce surveys show far more people using AI than have been trained to use it. The figures below come from the AI Capability Census, the Deloitte GenAI Workforce Survey, the Working in Ireland Survey and the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, with business surveys from the Institute of Directors, Belfast Chamber and Ulster Bank.

Adoption Sits Close to the UK Average

The Artificial Intelligence Capability Census 2026, commissioned by the Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Centre and prepared by Perspective Economics, analysed ONS survey data and found that about 39% of Northern Ireland respondents used at least one AI technology, against 41% across the UK on the same measure, which is calculated differently from the 35% UK headline earlier on this page.

Around 45% of Northern Ireland businesses said they were not currently using AI at all. Ulster Bank’s AI Adoption Report adds that Northern Ireland businesses with more than 100 employees are almost twice as likely to use AI as smaller firms, which mirrors the size gap in the UK data.

Northern Ireland Adoption Figures Range from 19% to 83%

Published adoption figures for Northern Ireland vary more than fourfold, and each is accurate for what it measures. Each survey asked a different group and counted a different kind of use, so the right figure depends on the decision you are making.

The Institute of Directors survey also found that only 39% of the businesses using AI did so strategically, which narrows formal, planned use to under one in ten Northern Ireland firms. For most owners, the honest reading is that strategy should be planned against the lower business figures, and training should be sized against the higher employee figures.

Employees Are Ahead of Their Employers

Deloitte’s survey, carried out between May and June 2026, found that 61% of Northern Ireland workers had used generative AI for work, 38% at least weekly and 21% every day. Nearly a third said they use AI tools without their employer’s knowledge. Only 34% had received formal training from their employer, and 30% said their employer actively encourages AI use. Searching for information (42%) and drafting emails (37%) were the most common uses, and the training workers asked for most was how to evaluate and fact-check outputs (27%), followed by cyber security training related to generative AI (24%).

The 2025 Working in Ireland Survey, reported in September 2026 and covering 4,300 workers in both jurisdictions, asked a stricter question and found that 26.1% of Northern Ireland workers intentionally use generative AI in their work, against 29.3% in the Republic.

Among employees who use it, 37.7% in Northern Ireland had received or were receiving employer training, against 42.8% in the Republic, although the Northern Ireland figure rests on only 53 respondents. The report also found that 36.5% of Northern Ireland employees in its sample work for an organisation with an official policy on generative AI, compared with 52.2% in the Republic.

Most Adults Know about AI but Few Have Trained

Research from EPIC Futures NI at Ulster University, drawing on the 2025 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, found that 98.6% of respondents had heard of AI and 67.7% agreed that learning to use AI tools would be essential for most jobs within five years. Only 18.6% had taken any AI-related training, course or self-directed learning in the previous 12 months. Concern is high, with 71.2% expecting AI to reduce the number of jobs and 84.2% worried about misuse of personal data, and any training programme in the region has to address both points directly.

Employers see the same gap from the other side. In a survey of 66 Northern Ireland HR leaders published by Lewis Silkin in April 2026, half named a shortage of AI literacy as the biggest readiness gap, yet only a third treated workforce training as a priority, and 40% felt leaders lacked the knowledge or vision to turn AI ambitions into practice. The Institute of Directors survey found the main barriers to adoption were a lack of knowledge (41%) and in-house skills (36%), with budget restrictions well behind at 22%.

The Local AI Sector Has Doubled in a Year

The AI Capability Census identified 400 Northern Ireland firms actively developing or deploying AI, up from 198 in the 2025 study, with AI-related employment up 79% to 2,402 full-time roles and estimated AI-related gross value added rising from £82 million to £214 million. Job advertisements asking for an AI or machine learning skill rose 161% on a rolling twelve-month basis, and the median advertised salary for AI roles was about £61,000 in the first half of 2026. Derry and Strabane alone now has 31 AI firms, against eight in the 2025 baseline.

For a small business, those salary and demand figures explain why recruiting AI specialists is rarely the answer. Training the people already on the payroll is the route most firms take, and teams in the North West can find details of digital training in Derry alongside the Belfast programme.

Ireland and the EU AI Act Add a Compliance Reason to Train

Businesses in the Republic of Ireland are slightly ahead of Northern Ireland on employer training, with 42.8% of employees who use generative AI trained by their employer in the Working in Ireland Survey, but use is very uneven. AI use at work ranges from 8.5% of workers earning under €15,000 a year to 73.8% of those earning €110,000 or more, so lower-paid roles are the least likely to have been shown how to use the tools safely.

The EU AI Act adds a legal reason to close that gap. Article 4 has applied to providers and deployers of AI systems since 2 February 2025, and the Digital Omnibus on AI (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744), in force since 27 July 2026, rewrote it as a duty to take measures that support the development of AI literacy among staff, replacing the original requirement to guarantee a sufficient level.

National authorities began supervising the obligation in August 2026. The Act is EU law, so businesses in Great Britain and Northern Ireland should seek legal advice on whether it reaches them, which usually depends on whether their AI systems or outputs are used in the EU. For a wider view of the Republic, see ProfileTree’s guide to how Irish businesses are adopting AI.

What Trained Teams Report Back

The results data is self-reported by businesses that already use AI, so it shows what users believe they have gained rather than a controlled return on investment. Read with that caveat, it is consistently positive. The Institute of Directors found that among Northern Ireland businesses using AI strategically, 86% reported efficiency gains, 71% better customer experience and 58% revenue growth. Ulster Bank’s report found that 77% of Northern Ireland businesses using AI saw improved efficiency and 71% improved profitability, and 84% of respondents to the Belfast Chamber survey reported efficiency and time savings.

The headcount evidence should reassure anxious staff. Around half of the UK businesses using AI told the ONS that it had made no difference to their headcount, and among businesses using AI to improve operations, 63% reported no change, 6% a decrease and 1% an increase. The Bank of England’s Decision Maker Panel reported a similar pattern in January 2026. Sharing these figures in a first session is a practical response to the 71.2% of Northern Ireland adults who expect AI to cut jobs.

On pay and productivity, the government’s AI Skills Boost explainer cites IMF research associating AI skills in the UK with a wage premium of about 7.5% to 8% within occupations. The same document models that if training added 1% to the output of 10 million workers, UK gross value added would rise by more than £7.5 billion a year, which is an illustrative assumption from the department and not a measured result.

Ciaran Connolly, founder of ProfileTree, puts it plainly: “The gap between organisations that train their people and those that simply buy the tools is widening every quarter. The winners are not the ones with the biggest AI budgets. They are the ones whose staff actually know what to do with them.”

Whether that holds in your own business is something you can test, and the guide on how to measure AI training effectiveness sets out what to track before and after a programme.

How to Use These Figures When Planning Training

For most Northern Ireland SMEs, the 11% and 34% training figures matter more than the adoption rates, because they show that the people using AI in your business have probably taught themselves. A sensible plan works through four steps in order.

1. Find out which tools staff already use, since nearly a third of Northern Ireland workers in the Deloitte survey use AI without their employer’s knowledge, and a plan built only on approved software will miss them.
2. Put foundation training in place first, using the free AI Skills Boost courses, which are open to every adult in the UK and benchmarked against Skills England’s AI foundation skills for work.
3. Add role-specific sessions on checking outputs and handling data, because those were the topics Northern Ireland workers asked for most and data misuse was the strongest public concern.
4. Keep a record of what was delivered and measure change on a few named tasks, which also gives businesses in the Republic a record of the measures the EU AI Act asks for.

The choice of format follows from those steps. The comparison of in-house and outsourced AI training helps decide who delivers it, the guide to workshops and webinars in AI training covers the delivery format, and choosing an AI training programme sets out the criteria for comparing providers. Training that covers wider skills such as content and social media sits under ProfileTree’s digital training service, and the article on AI training and team collaboration looks at training technical and non-technical staff together.

If your team is using AI more than it has been trained to, the most useful next step is a conversation about where the gaps sit and which sessions would close them first. Contact ProfileTree to talk through a training plan for your business.

FAQs