Are your workers actively sabotaging your AI rollout?

Nearly one in three Canadian workers have admitted to exaggerating their AI skills at work, while only 37 per cent say their employer has provided adequate AI training, according to the 2026 TD AI Insights Report. Separate global research suggests the consequences are escalating: a 2026 AI Adoption Survey of 2,400 knowledge workers in five countries by Writer and Workplace Intelligence found three in 10 employees are actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy – refusing to use tools, ignoring guidelines, intentionally generating low-quality outputs, and entering proprietary information into non-approved platforms.

Diagnosing where AI adoption strategies meet resistance – even to the point of sabotage – points to a singular root cause: organizations are deploying AI without first investing in the people expected to use it, says Brent Dul, Executive Vice-President at Randstad Canada in Toronto. Dul believes that the sabotage statistic reflects something more fundamental than hostility toward technology.

“That’s just indicative of employees not being able to buy into AI because they feel it’s designed to replace them,” Dul says. “Trust is built through transparent upskilling and proving — more than showing, I’ll use the word proving — that AI is an investment in their future.”

Operational reality gap in AI’s impact

The TD AI Insights Report indicates that Canadians aren’t ideologically opposed to the technology. A strong majority – 78 per cent – accept that AI adoption is inevitable, and 59 per cent say it makes them more productive. The problem, says Dul, is a gap between macro-level acceptance and individual readiness. “While many Canadians might feel very tech confident, there’s an operational reality gap in how they see AI as impacting their future career,” he says.

Aram Arslanian, President and CEO of Cadence Leadership + Communication in Vancouver, traces the problem of resistance and sabotage of AI adoption to how organizations sequence change. He points to the stages of change model – pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance – as a framework most rollouts ignore. And, often, leaders overestimate their readiness for change.

“Individuals and companies are skipping those first two crucial steps and then just trying to hop right into training or right into ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ and your audience isn’t there,” says Arslanian.

As HRD Canada’s coverage of workforce resistance and AI transformation returns has shown, only 29 per cent of corporate transformations consistently deliver the value they were designed to create, according to Kearney’s Transformation Study 2026 – a failure rate that compounds when adoption is treated as an implementation afterthought.

Identifying and addressing resistance and sabotage

Arslanian believes that one of the most damaging forms of resistance is also the easiest to miss. Passive resistance – where employees appear to comply and acknowledge feedback, but continue undermining the initiative regardless – is key for HR to get ahead of, he says.

“This kind of reaction is a way of subtly training people to leave me alone because I don’t want to do this thing that you want me to do,” he says. “I am going to waste your time. I’m going to make getting me there so difficult for you.”

He encourages HR leaders to segment their workforce into three groups when approaching significant change: champions, challengers, and neutrals. Champions act ahead of the change. Challengers ask detailed questions and move with precision. Neutrals – which he estimates to be about 60 per cent of any workforce – observe and take their cues from what happens around them.

“Neutral people are almost what I consider to be like swing voters in an election,” Arslanian says. “If an organization is having a lot of this kind of kickback through people doing things they know that they shouldn’t be doing, I would suggest it’s because the right kinds of conversations with the neutrals haven’t happened.”

Where things can go wrong is when some of the challengers are actually detractors, according to Arslanian. “Detractors, for all sorts of psychological reasons, are just kind of like sowing chaos and when you realize someone's a detractor, they probably shouldn't be in the organization, which is a whole other piece of conversation,” he says. “But beyond that, it's really about understanding what are we trying to do, why are we trying to do it, and how do we talk to people about it?”

AI as investment, not a chopping block

Frontline managers are the key to successful AI adoption, as most AI communication strategies are too top-heavy to stick, says Dul. He says that Randstad Canada’s Workmonitor research shows that over 72 per cent of Canadian workers are relying on strengthened relationships with their direct manager to look out for their best interests – a level of confidence the C-suite rarely commands.

“Your C-suite has to equip your frontline managers to lead that AI conversation,” he says. “Perhaps that’s what’s missed – the individual’s direct manager, who they trust the most to look out for their best interest, just isn’t equipped to give them the answers they’re looking for and explain their human value tied into that AI strategy. If you don’t have that, I think your strategy is going to fail.”

As HRD Canada reported, The Leadership Readiness Gap report by Careerminds found that 66 per cent of C-suite leaders feel ready to guide AI-driven change but fewer than half of senior and middle managers agree – a disconnect that widens the gap between strategy and frontline execution.

Dul also challenges the tendency to treat AI deployment as an opportunity to reduce headcount. “The organizations that have done it well have paired their AI investment with people investment to use those tools and to upskill them so that they can take on a more high-value role within the organization,” he says.

Communication before implementation happens is another key to the change process, says Arslanian. “Don’t start with the how it’s going to happen, start with the why and the what,” he says.

The rules of engagement

On genuine sabotage, Arslanian advocates empathy first, then accountability. “With AI, you're going to hear one day this is the greatest thing and the next day it's like everyone's going to lose their jobs, so of course there's going to be resistance,” he says. “Be ultra clear: this is exactly what we’re doing, these are the rules of engagement – and then just move swiftly if people are going against that – open dialogue, document everything, but move swiftly if you feel you’ve got a bad actor.”

AI adoption has to be transparent, says Dul, and that will help smooth out resistance. “Start small, communicate it well, and help people start to identify the benefit, and then don’t be quiet when you see those benefits taking place,” he says. “Find champions within your business – not just at the C-suite or at the manager level, but find champions within the business of people saying, ‘Hey, this is actually benefitting my day-to-day’ and make sure they’re loud about it.”