The Year of AI Transformation: AI Trends for 2026
While 2025 was slated as the year of AI experimentation, 2026 is set to be the year of AI transformation. What does this mean for business leaders? And with this AI transformation, how can risks be mitigated? We explore the predicted trends for businesses in the South for the year ahead.
The CMA Salary Survey noted a definite upward trend in AI usage among businesses in the region over the past 12 months. It’s worth noting that this trend is not universally embraced, there are sector variances between finance versus public sector, for example. However, companies shared with us that benefits such as productivity gains, data analysis and cost savings were seen as the biggest wins offered by AI adoption.
The AI shift
The shift we are seeing now in companies, is the move from AI adoption – to AI transformation. As Jeannie Meister says on Forbes: “AI adoption means doing the same work more efficiently. AI transformation, by contrast, embeds AI into the core of business operations, fundamentally changing how work gets done across the enterprise.”
This change is being led from the top to capitalise on these gains. Richard Dibden, CMA Commercial Director, explains: “For many businesses, AI has moved from experimentation to expectation, with Boards increasingly looking to finance leaders to translate AI from capability into commercial impact.”
“This AI is improving forecast confidence, strengthening risk oversight and driving productivity across the organisation.”
AI and people
With this shift must come a focus on the people within the company using AI – while these programs can be used to transform, the defining challenge is not technical, it’s human. Cyril Bouquet, Christopher J. Wright and Julian Nolan note in the Harvard Business Review: “Many AI initiatives falter not because the underlying algorithms are weak but because people resist using the tools.”
Therefore, investment is needed in AI literacy and training to ensure employee buy-in. What’s more, leaders need to be ensuring that policies and procedures are in place to protect the company and mitigate risk.
“As AI becomes part of everyday decision-making, businesses need clear rules around how it’s used”, says Richard Dibden.
“Without proper guardrails, the risks, which include regulatory, legal, reputational and financial, can quickly outweigh the benefits.”
!["Without proper guardrails, the risks [of AI], which include regulatory, legal, reputational and financial, can quickly outweigh the benefits. "](https://www.cmarecruitment.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/AI-trends-richard-quot2-2.png)
The importance of AI policies
AI comes with huge benefits but also huge risks to a company if procedures are not put in place to ensure IP and sensitive data are not properly protected. The 2025 CMA Salary survey found that businesses in the region were risking huge exposure, with over three quarters of recipients not being aware of an AI policy at their company.
Richard summarises: “AI is incredibly powerful, but it’s not risk-free. As more decisions are influenced by AI, businesses need to be clear about how it’s used. In short, the governance of AI within a business needs to keep pace with its usage.”
AI and all its benefits is there for the taking, but leadership teams need to be ensuring now that the groundwork has been done to embed AI into a company’s core, in order to fully see it maximised to its full potential.
