AI, Trust and the Workforce: Mercer’s 2025 HR Tech Report Findings for the UK, US and Europe
- 7 Min Read
For more than 75 years, Mercer has been one of the world’s leading human capital advisors, working across 130 countries to help organisations build healthier, more resilient and future-ready workforces. Its latest report, HR Technology’s Impact on the Workforce 2025, provides one of the most comprehensive datasets to date on how employees across the UK, US and Europe feel about AI, skills and the technology shaping their work.
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- Author: HRD Connect
- Date published: Nov 25, 2025
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For more than 75 years, Mercer has been one of the world’s leading human capital advisors, working across 130 countries to help organisations build healthier, more resilient and future-ready workforces. Its latest report, HR Technology’s Impact on the Workforce 2025, provides one of the most comprehensive datasets to date on how employees across the UK, US and Europe feel about AI, skills and the technology shaping their work.
The findings reveal a consistent story: AI is accelerating, but trust, leadership communication and cultural readiness are falling behind. For HR leaders, the challenge is no longer simply which technologies to adopt, but how to repair the trust gap that is emerging between workers and leadership.
The UK: Low adoption, low fear, and an even lower sense of preparedness
Mercer’s UK data presents a paradox. Among UK workers, only 49 percent have used AI to support their jobs. Eighteen percent believe AI has nothing to offer their role and 14 percent say they simply have not been trained to use it. This lag is especially concerning given the UK’s ongoing productivity crisis, which AI could help address if adoption were more widespread.
Yet fear of job displacement remains relatively low in the UK compared with other markets. Only around one in ten UK employees is concerned about technology disrupting their job. The report suggests this calm is misleading. Low fear reflects low engagement and low awareness, not confidence.
Mercer connects this pattern to the UK’s historically cautious stance on technology and data. By mirroring Europe’s risk-averse regulatory instincts without the same investment in national upskilling, the UK risks leaving both organisations and workers underprepared for disruption.
The report also reveals striking UK inequities:
- Lower-wage earners are the least concerned about technology disrupting their roles, despite being most exposed to automation risk.
- Employees earning more than $100,000 are the most concerned, at 58 percent.
- Only 13 percent of UK workers spend 30 percent or more of their time learning new skills.
- Only one in four UK employees feels fairly compensated, a key predictor of willingness to upskill.
The takeaway for HR: UK workers lack both the awareness and the cultural conditions to adapt to AI. Without intervention, the gap will widen.
United States: High adoption, high anxiety and a widening leadership vacuum
The United States is one of the world’s highest adopters of workplace AI tools. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, US employees show rising discomfort with AI’s potential impact on their roles. While roughly half of US workers have used AI at work, a significant proportion say they hesitate to try new technologies because they worry they will be replaced.
The report highlights a critical governance gap. Very few US workers say they have heard from senior leadership about how AI will change their job. Even fewer have heard from HR. This disconnect leaves managers unsupported and workers confused.
The result is a market where adoption is high, understanding is low and trust is fragile.
Europe: Cultural caution and slow movement despite low fear
Across Europe, AI adoption remains significantly below global averages. Fewer than half of employees in key EU markets have used AI in their roles. The report explains this through Europe’s culture of data privacy and risk aversion, shaped by a long history of data misuse.
Here, workers are neither afraid nor empowered. They are simply uninformed.
European leaders face a unique challenge. There is less anxiety to manage, but there is also less urgency to adapt. Organisations risk complacency unless they invest intentionally in capability building.
A universal trend: fear rises with familiarity
Mercer’s report identifies one of its most important insights: fear grows with familiarity. Unlike previous technological waves, where fear declined as workers gained exposure, AI is different. The more employees understand AI’s capabilities, the more anxious they become.
This pattern is especially pronounced in the UAE and Singapore, where adoption is highest. Yet even in these regions, governments and employers have mitigated fear by investing heavily in training, governance and national upskilling programmes.
In contrast, UK and European workers may have lower fear levels simply because they lack exposure.
Misplaced worry, misaligned impact
Employees most vulnerable to automation risk are the least concerned about it. Higher earners and senior professionals are more likely to express fear about AI, while those in lower-paid roles remain largely unaware of their exposure.
For the UK, the report links this dynamic to a legacy of broken trust, particularly the memory of large-scale job losses in industries like coal mining in the 1980s. Workers who lived through broken assurances remain cautious, and their successors remain sceptical.
Mercer argues that trust is now the decisive currency for navigating disruption.
Upskilling is conditional, not automatic
Across the UK, US and Europe, organisations are struggling to translate upskilling ambitions into behaviour change. Mercer’s data shows that tech alone will not create a more capable workforce. Culture sets the ceiling.
Employees upskill when:
- They feel fairly paid
- They trust their manager
- They believe their organisation will invest in their future
In the UK, fewer than 25 percent feel fairly compensated, which severely limits motivation for learning. By contrast, in the UAE, where nearly half of workers feel they are paid fairly, learning activity is significantly higher.
The message for HR leaders: if upskilling is a priority, address pay equity, manager capability and psychological safety first.
Leadership silence is the biggest barrier
Across all regions, Mercer’s findings converge on a single conclusion. Technology is not the problem. Leadership silence is.
- Fewer than one in four CEOs have spoken publicly about AI’s workplace impacts.
- Fewer than one in five employees have heard from their direct manager about what AI means for their role.
- Only 30 percent of workers trust their organisation to guide them toward the skills they need next.
In the UK, the numbers are even worse. Only 17 percent of employees say their CEO has addressed AI’s implications, which deepens uncertainty and erodes trust.
The report is unequivocal: employees need leaders who communicate openly and honestly, even when answers are incomplete.
What HR leaders need to do next
1. Make AI a people conversation, not a technology one
Explain work redesign, not job loss. Provide clarity, not assumptions.
2. Equip managers to be the primary communicators
Employees trust their managers more than HR or senior executives. This is where reassurance and guidance must live.
3. Strengthen the cultural foundations for upskilling
Address pay fairness, workload and psychological safety before investing in new tools.
4. Build governance for responsible AI adoption
Ethics, transparency and data literacy will define the next decade of workforce trust.
5. Bring employees into the design of change
Co-creation reduces fear and increases capability retention.
AI is not the disruptor. Silence is.
Across the UK, US and Europe, Mercer’s research shows that workers are not afraid of technology. They are afraid of being unprepared, unsupported and uninformed. The future of work will not be shaped by algorithms, but by the leaders who give people the confidence to navigate them.
AI may be unavoidable, but fear is not. The organisations that thrive will be those that replace silence with transparency, uncertainty with clarity and anxiety with trust.
