India’s Workforce Embraces AI, but Productivity Gains are Coming with Greater Stretch

India’s workforce is embracing AI. Now work itself is changing.

AI is becoming part of everyday work in India, with employees reporting strong gains in efficiency and productivity. But those gains are arriving alongside rising workloads, broader responsibilities and higher expectations. The next challenge is turning AI-created capacity into greater business value, not simply more work.

What Workforce 2026 tells us

AI adoption is becoming AI integration
73% of employees in India say AI tools are being integrated into how work gets done, compared with 54% globally. And 70% say AI fluency is already incorporated into employee reviews. AI is starting to influence not just how people work, but how performance is assessed.  

Productivity is rising, but so is the workload
81% say AI improves efficiency and 79% say they are more productive than a year ago. Yet 78% report significantly higher workloads, while 73% say AI has increased the number of tasks expected in their role.  

Employees see opportunity and disruption
74% believe AI will bolster their value over the next three years. At the same time, 60% believe their role could be replaced by AI or technology during that period.  

More activity does not automatically mean more impact
62% say they are too busy to deliver meaningful results and 68% say existing processes and structures hold back their performance. The leadership challenge is deciding how the capacity created by AI will be used.  

From AI adoption to AI-enabled work

For leaders, the next step is bigger than deploying more technology. It means rethinking what work requires human expertise, what AI can own, and how workflows, roles and performance should be redesigned around outcomes.