AI adoption outpaces training in Philippines: 78% use it daily, only 35% trained

On a July morning in 2026, nearly five hundred HR leaders and executives gathered at the Dusit Thani Manila for what Sprout Solutions had billed as its flagship conversation about the future of work. The State of HR Summit 2026 filled the ballroom to capacity, and the theme threading through the day was deliberate: Leading a People-First AI Transformation. The organizers wanted to explore a specific question—how organizations could harness AI to drive performance without losing sight of the humans doing the work.

The tension that emerged from the summit's opening hours was stark and immediate. A nationwide study of more than 3,500 employees across thirteen industries revealed that 78 percent of Filipino workers now use artificial intelligence daily in their jobs. The data showed something encouraging: those who used AI reported higher output, less stress, and greater recognition from their organizations. Yet the same study uncovered a chasm. Only 35 percent of those workers had received any role-specific training in how to use these tools effectively. The gap between adoption and enablement was not a minor friction—it was a structural vulnerability.

Sprout's Chief Operating Officer, Kislay Chandra, reframed the conversation in his opening remarks. The question was no longer whether AI would reshape work, he said. That was settled. The real question was how leaders would choose to shape that transformation. Organizations that would win, he argued, would be those that learned to combine human capability and artificial intelligence well. This framing—not AI versus humans, but humans and AI together—became the spine of the day's discussions.

Cliff Eala, CEO of BS Works, pushed the idea further in his keynote. A people-first approach, he argued, meant prioritizing augmentation over automation. AI skills alone were useful, but they became far more valuable when paired with genuine domain expertise. The sharpest insight he offered was about complementarity: AI matters most when it amplifies what humans already know. He warned against outsourcing too much thinking to machines. When organizations do that, they risk eroding the human judgment that experience builds. "We often don't have complete, accurate, and timely information," he said. "This absence breeds uncertainty, which begs for judgment. And this is exactly where the human is needed."

Across multiple panel discussions, a familiar Philippine tension surfaced. Many workers were fluent in mobile and social media but still underused AI for actual work. The bottleneck was not access to the technology—it was demonstrating practical value. Employee buy-in, panelists agreed, was the real constraint. Leaders could set direction, but adoption would fail if people could not see how AI helped in their own work. One HR director, Mia Cuenco of Smartsourcing, reframed the entire challenge: people create value while AI amplifies capacity. The work itself needed to be redesigned before it was automated. The question should not be how AI could replace work, but how it could enrich people.

The leadership panels sharpened the human angle further. The old expectation that leaders needed to know everything was obsolete. What mattered now was judgment, curiosity, accountability, and the ability to bring people together. AI could compress teams, but it must not lower the bar for quality. Competitive edge would come from orchestrating AI well. And sustained upskilling and reskilling, panelists emphasized, was what would keep the Filipino workforce competitive as roles were redesigned.

Sprout used the summit to debut new tools aimed at closing the training gap: Foresight, an AI-powered analytics solution for predictive and prescriptive HR insights; Sidekick, an AI assistant built to answer employee questions on payslips and compliance; and updated performance management solutions that incorporated AI-supported reviews and feedback. The company also launched the inaugural Sprout Foresight Awards to recognize organizations demonstrating people-first workplace practices.

In closing, Sprout's Chief Marketing Officer, Renzo Belardo, returned to the summit's core conviction. Technology may change how work gets done, but people shape what comes next. The challenge was not adopting AI—every organization would eventually have similar capabilities. The real differentiator would be leadership, the willingness to learn, and the courage to bring people along. That gap between the 78 percent using AI and the 35 percent trained to use it well was not a problem to solve in isolation. It was a signal about what the next phase of work would demand: not faster adoption, but smarter enablement.