‘People who naturally enjoy exploring tend to adopt AI more quickly in their daily work’
HR professionals should factor personality into AI training and adoption strategies as employees' curiosity, caution or skepticism — not just the technology itself — may determine who embraces AI and who resists it, according to a recent report.
The study – based on panel data from nearly 10,000 U.S. working adults – found that frequent AI users tend to be curious, imaginative, open to new experiences, eager to learn, and confident in trying new approaches.
"People who naturally enjoy exploring tend to adopt AI more quickly in their daily work," says Jerod White, a research scientist at Hogan Assessments, which did the study.
Speaking to Canadian HR Reporter, White says organizations may benefit from using validated personality assessments to identify likely early adopters, but he cautions that adoption alone does not guarantee appropriate use.
"I think it feeds both of those needs, especially for the inquisitive kind of workers," he says, referring to employees' drive to both get ahead and connect with colleagues. Curious employees, he says, are also the most likely to test a tool's limits, sometimes providing prompts an employer would not sanction.
Caution carries risk
Hogan's research also found that more organized, disciplined and detail-oriented employees tend to trust AI's output more, making them useful partners in building governance and quality-control processes.
By contrast, employees who are cautious, skeptical of change or sensitive to uncertainty are more likely to fear AI will replace their jobs, a concern White links to workplace stress and burnout if left unaddressed.
"There is a clear concern that some employees have about their job security," he says, adding that support should not depend on personality. Training that demonstrates concrete, job-relevant uses for AI can raise adoption regardless of an employee's natural disposition.
Canadian employees who regularly use AI tools spend nearly twice as much time working outside the office as peers who have not adopted the technology, revealing a growing split in what parts of their workforce expect from office space, according to a previous report.
Managers set the tone
A related Hogan study of 648 workers — 290 managers and 358 non-managers — found managers scored higher than non-managers on all six measures of AI acceptance and use, including perceived usefulness (4.88 versus 4.13) and perceived ease of use (5.21 versus 4.61).
Managers were also far more likely to report using AI to "orchestrate work," such as planning tasks, at 26.92 per cent compared with 11.86 per cent of non-managers.
"It does seem that managers are using AI, so they would be in a good position to be a good role model for effective AI use," White says, which makes communication skills, including modelling appropriate AI use, a priority when developing managers.
"You can tell your employees to do all kinds of things with AI, but if they look at you and see that you're doing the opposite of what you're saying, that can be a pretty dissonant feeling," he says.
HR professionals risk eroding employee trust, accelerating attrition, and exposing their organizations to legal and reputational damage as workplace AI adoption outpaces ethics and compliance policies, one expert previously told Canadian HR Reporter.
Canadian adoption is accelerating
Statistics Canada's second-quarter 2026 analysis found 19.2 per cent of Canadian businesses reported using AI in the prior 12 months, more than triple the 6.1 per cent reported in the second quarter of 2024.
Adoption was highest in information and cultural industries (42.3 per cent), finance and insurance (40.4 per cent), and professional, scientific and technical services (32.4 per cent), with 19.9 per cent of businesses with one to four employees also reporting AI use.
Among Canadian businesses using AI, 44.4 per cent made changes to training or staffing practices, and 32.0 per cent introduced AI-related training for existing employees, Statistics Canada found.
Best practices for HR professionals
White recommends that organizations introduce AI training for all employees, regardless of their apparent comfort with the technology, rather than assuming reluctant workers are unable or unwilling to adapt. He says training should go beyond basic tool familiarity and demonstrate concrete, job-relevant uses, such as adjusting the tone of an email after receiving feedback.
He also points to managers as a critical lever for adoption, recommending that organizations prioritize communication skills, including setting clear expectations for appropriate AI use and modelling that use consistently. Employees often mirror the behaviour of workers with influence in an organization, he says, making managers conduct a direct driver of how AI is used across a team.
Above all, White cautions HR professionals not to treat AI adoption as a purely technical rollout.
"HR professionals shouldn't lose sight of the value of understanding psychologically the workers who are interacting with these tools," he says, adding that the strength of these patterns can vary by labour market conditions and regulatory context, so organizations should weigh their own environment when applying the findings.
