NROC study finds only 5% of employees are truly effective GenAI users
NROC Security USA said its latest quarterly study found GenAI use has spread across more employees and more app families, yet only about 5% of sampled users qualified as truly effective users.
NROC Security USA said on Aug. 12 that its Q2 2026 research found broader use of generative AI across enterprises, but only about 5% of sampled business users were truly effective at it.
The New Rochelle, New York-based company said the finding suggests access to AI tools alone does not translate into productivity gains. In the release, NROC said the users seeing the strongest results were those using AI frequently and prompting at a high skill level.
According to the report, the company sampled 4,800 business users and analyzed 139,000 GenAI interactions across a typical enterprise mix of knowledge-worker profiles. It said active GenAI usage nearly doubled from Q1 2026 to Q2 2026, rising from 19% to 31% of eligible employees. NROC also said the number of app families in use nearly tripled, from 19 to 53.
The company defined “truly effective” users as daily or weekly users with high prompting skill. NROC said the full report examines adoption and weekly usage, how ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot are being used, prompting-skill data, data-exposure trends, and the methodology behind its effectiveness index.
Antti Reijonen, NROC Security USA’s chief executive, said in the release that frequency of use and prompting skill, not access to AI, drive productivity. He said broad enterprise license rollouts alone may not produce meaningful effectiveness gains if usage remains occasional and prompts remain basic.
NROC Security USA described itself as a venture-backed AI security company that provides a network-based AI security proxy and SaaS subscription for governing and securing GenAI use. The company said its product is designed to help with data privacy, compliance, visibility and policy enforcement for middle-market and larger enterprises.
The release did not say whether the study was independently reviewed.
The company said its full report covers adoption trends, prompting skill and governance guidance for enterprise use of GenAI tools.
Sources
Editorial note: This article was prepared with AI assistance and includes source attribution for reader review.
Comments ()