The fifth Protiviti AI Pulse Survey, titled The AI-People Conundrum: Learning to Lead, Not Lag, highlights a divide between the boardroom's aggressive adoption goals and the ground-level reality of workforce transformation. Only 13% of CHROs strongly agree that their job designs are currently AI-ready, a figure that pales in comparison to the 28% consensus among their C-suite peers.

Fran Maxwell, global leader of People & Change at Protiviti, attributes this friction to a fundamental disagreement on priorities. While other executives focus on technical output, HR leaders are grappling with the complexities of redesigning career paths, compensation models, and learning capabilities. This pragmatism is reflected in the data: only 5% of CHROs expect half of their department's work to be AI-enabled by 2029. In contrast, 96% of IT leaders express high confidence in their own functional readiness, suggesting that the path to AI adoption is being viewed through two very different lenses: one of technical potential and one of organizational viability.