A new survey from Salesforce has found that the majority of ANZ knowledge workers are already using AI in their personal lives, and those who do are arriving at work with significantly more confidence than those who are not.
The survey covered 2,132 ANZ knowledge workers, including 1,515 Australians and 617 New Zealanders, and was conducted in September 2025. 86 per cent of respondents said they use AI in their personal lives. Of those, 74 per cent reported that personal AI use had increased their confidence in the workplace. 95 per cent of all respondents expect AI agents to positively affect their roles within two years.
The findings point to something business owners need to sit with. The workers who are already building comfort and capability with AI are not doing so because their employers trained them. They are doing it on their own time, through their own curiosity, with tools they chose themselves. The ones who have not done that yet are not less capable. They may simply have had less opportunity, less confidence to start, or no one around them encouraging them to try.
When workers in the survey were asked what they needed to feel comfortable using AI in the workplace, the top answers were transparency and control (47 per cent), expert support (45 per cent), and security safeguards (43 per cent). These are not technical barriers. They are people barriers. And they are exactly the kind of barriers that do not get solved by buying another tool.
The gap between your most AI-confident employees and your least is unlikely to close on its own. The workers who feel ready are already ahead. The ones who do not need support, guidance, and a clear signal from leadership that it is safe to learn and make mistakes along the way.
For Australian businesses in the middle of introducing AI into their operations, the Salesforce data is a useful prompt. Understanding where your people actually are, and then giving them the time and support to get ready, is what determines whether the transition goes well. The technology is rarely the hard part.
Via Salesforce ANZ Knowledge Worker Survey 2026
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