Mona Morshed has spent more than a decade working on the future of work.
As CEO of Generation, one of the world's largest employment nonprofits, working in 17 countries and helping more than 140,000 people find jobs, she has a front row seat to how companies are working with artificial intelligence.
Her takeaway: Many companies implement AI without a clear strategy.
“The vast majority of employers have implemented some form of AI tools,” Morshed, who previously worked at McKinsey, where he founded Generation, told Business Insider.
“The question is whether they are deploying them in an effective way.”
Too often, she says, companies take a scattergun approach.
“For a lot of employers, it's, 'Hey, here's your license. Go ahead and use it,'” she added. “As a result, employees don't know how and why they need to use it to reap the long-awaited benefits of productivity, quality, and satisfaction.”
Generation's own research highlighted that gap.
The nonprofit's survey of more than 5,000 people across 17 countries in early 2025 found that 65% of respondents had already responded. Use AI in your work.
Nearly 80% of them used it at least once a week, while 52% said they learned on their own, relying on tutorials and peers rather than formal guidance from their employer.
Here are Mourshed's four recommendations for CEOs looking to effectively implement AI.
Start with use cases, not fancy tools
Morshed said the biggest mistake was giving employees AI tools without connecting them to the problem.
“The difference is not identifying the use case,” she says.
She gave the example of Generation itself.
“We are an employment organization. There are several bottlenecks to our growth. We need to mobilize a lot of jobs,” she said.
“That's the first question. A big bottleneck to our growth is job mobility. So how can we leverage AI to move more jobs faster? That's where the conversation starts.”
Leaders who start with bottlenecks rather than tools are much more likely to see tangible gains, she said.
Install transparent guardrails
AI only works if leaders accurately understand workflows and handle data with care.
“AI is a tool, and for it to work, you have to input very detailed workflow steps, you have to input data,” Morshed said.
She cautioned leaders to balance access and responsibility.
“You have to feed data, but you also have to be very careful not to feed personal information,” she says. “You want to make sure we're reducing bias, so in some cases you don't want to provide data on gender or ethnic background.”
Strengthen your internal champions and safe spaces
Change doesn't just come from the C-suite. Companies need to identify and promote “power users,” Morshed said.
“Some people will love it and start using it all the time,” she says. “These people are actually the best Sherpas out there.”
At Generation, we encourage our staff to share their experiences on AI “roundtables.”
“Think of this like a water cooler coffee chat. We do it virtually, but it's about the topic of AI,” she said.
Treat AI as an augmentation, not a replacement
In some sectors, the number of entry-level roles exposed to AI is already decreasing.
“Today, when you look at entry-level vacancies in occupations that are exposed to AI, entry-level vacancies in occupations that are exposed to AI, there is certainly a reality that they are declining. And that's not just in high-income countries, but also in middle-income countries,” she said.
But she cautioned against apocalyptic talk.
“We also know from the history of technology that as things change, technology creates other jobs,” she says.
Even in industries that seem isolated, AI is quietly reshaping workflows, she said.
“We are seeing AI starting to play a role in quality assurance roles,” she said, citing examples such as solar panel maintenance and clothing inspection.
Bottom line: don't sit down.
Murshed said leaders cannot afford to sit idly by while AI evolves.
“This is a very learning time,” she said. “There's no silver bullet here. It's going to be a struggle for all of us to figure out how to get the most out of this technology.”
She advises CEOs to look both outside and inside their organizations, learn from colleagues, track internal champions, and spread their practices.
That's what separates the winners from the losers, she said.
