Measuring What Matters: Culture as the Foundation of AI Readiness

Measuring What Matters: Culture as the Foundation of AI Readiness
March 25, 2026 6 mins

Measuring What Matters: Culture as the Foundation of AI Readiness

Measuring What Matters: Culture as the Foundation of AI Readiness

As AI transforms everyday work and skills, establishing a strong organizational culture helps build the employee trust needed to openly navigate new tools and embrace change as an opportunity for growth.

Key Takeaways
  1. AI transformation reshapes roles and workflows faster than job descriptions can keep up — but culture can help move the dial, prompting people to adopt new tools with speed, confidence and sound judgment.
  2. As technology skills and jobs evolve, organizations need a learning culture that rewards experimentation, reskilling and responsible use of AI.
  3. Transformation sticks when leaders reinforce the behaviors that make AI useful at scale and then measure those behaviors to strengthen culture as work and talent models change.

Rapid advancements in technical skills are fundamentally altering organizations' approaches to talent management. Artificial intelligence (AI) fluency is required in many jobs today, but an Aon study finds that only 35% of employees globally feel motivated to acquire new skills in response to AI.1 At the same time, senior leaders across many organizations are highly engaged in conversations around AI and its potential to optimize business processes and outcomes. The challenge is not a lack of interest or ambition, but a growing capability gap.

A comprehensive AI strategy is therefore shaped less by technology alone and more by leadership practices that foster a strong organizational culture — one where individuals feel supported to learn, experiment and adapt as AI reshapes everyday work. It also requires people to challenge legacy norms that may have served the organization well in the past, but now slow the rapid cultural shifts needed to pivot as AI disrupts business models.

Increasingly, AI transformation is a social challenge that influences trust, inclusion, decision making and the employee experience. As rapid skill changes occur, measuring culture and values is just as vital as assessing competencies.

“Culture is rising in importance as a core concept of how to evaluate leaders,” says John McLaughlin, Chief Commercial Officer for Aon’s Talent Solutions and Head of Assessment in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “During periods of rapid change and transformation, it is easy for companies to lose sight of their foundational values when they underpin the very foundations of success.”

How to Measure and Define Culture in a Technology-Driven Future

As AI reshapes work, its impact extends beyond technology and processes.

Employers need to identify which cultural traits matter most to success in an AI‑enabled environment and define how those traits show up in everyday behavior as work changes. Importantly, not every culture lends itself to transformational change: Organizations that default to risk aversion may be slower and more reluctant to experiment and adopt AI at scale.

To achieve objective culture measurement, organizations should:

  • Pinpoint and define the cultural traits that align with better performance outcomes, now and in the future.

    This could include:

    • Safety and quality (especially critical in life sciences and regulated industries)
    • Ethics and compliance
    • Learning-oriented traits that enable adoption at scale, such as appropriate levels of risk-taking, innovation, collaboration and continuous learning
  • Translate these traits into observable, measurable behaviors.

    Here are some examples of how cultural traits translate into behaviors:

    • Learning agility can be observed in whether employees experiment with new AI‑enabled workflows, seek feedback on AI‑supported outputs and adjust their approach when tools or processes change.
    • Where risk aversion dominates, people may avoid piloting new approaches or wait for perfect certainty.
    • In more adaptive cultures, teams test safely, learn quickly and share what works.
    • Psychological safety is reflected in whether people feel comfortable raising concerns about accuracy, bias or unintended consequences, admitting when they don’t fully understand an output, and learning openly from mistakes rather than hiding them.
  • Connect behaviors to relevant outcomes.

    Cultures that emphasize learning are more likely to see higher engagement and sustained performance. Collaboration can be assessed by how effectively teams share insights and adapt roles as workflows evolve. Experimentation can be tracked through pilot participation, iteration speed and adoption rate.

Quote icon

An important question with AI transformation is how willing organizations are to adapt roles, behaviors and ways of working to truly make AI a competitive advantage.

Marius Grindeman
Head of Product Strategy, Assessment Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Rethinking How to Assess Leadership: The Driver of Culture

Establishing a strong culture starts at the top. That’s why forward-looking organizations are already replacing intuition with data-driven assessments to identify future leaders. As jobs evolve, traditional interviews, which are often unstructured and subjective, are less effective at assessing judgment, collaboration and adaptability.

Organizations are now using a variety of assessment tools to enhance their leadership measurements, including:

  • Scenario-based simulations that require leaders to respond to complex, ambiguous business challenges
  • AI-supported video interviews that analyze how candidates organize their thoughts and communicate
  • Collaborative exercises that demonstrate how they influence, listen and resolve conflict
  • Data-driven personality and judgment assessments that predict how they will lead through change

Assessing leadership behavior provides critical insight into whether an organization is truly prepared for ongoing technological and social change — including whether its leaders translate stated values into clear expectations and guardrails for how AI is used. This can become a core differentiator amid uncertainty.

21%

of employees prioritize a fun place to work and 20% prioritize working for an organization aligned with their values, underscoring the importance of culture.

Source: Aon’s 2025 Employee Sentiment Study

Leaders who create conditions where people learn, collaborate and adapt with confidence are more likely to have a better return on their investment in technology and tools.

Case Study

Applying Structured Assessment to Leadership and Culture

A large multinational employer faced rising health-related absenteeism, driving productivity loss and increasing benefit costs. Using workforce data and assessment tools, Aon analyzed the client’s workforce culture, health indicators, turnover and absenteeism patterns to identify where and why absenteeism was a chronic risk. From these insights, tailored interventions were created, including proactive wellbeing communications and preventative health campaigns for higher-risk groups. As a result, the employer saw reduced health-related absence risk, improved engagement levels in key populations, more targeted use of wellbeing and preventative health support, and lower pressure on benefits and productivity costs.

Culture, Succession Planning and Long-Term Stewardship

Culture is not only needed in the here and now; it plays a critical role in succession planning. This challenge is amplified by rapidly shifting workforce demographics. As younger, more digitally native generations become a larger share of the workforce in many markets, expectations around autonomy, speed, learning and the use of AI‑enabled tools are changing. Future leaders will need to steward culture across a multi‑generational workforce with fundamentally different assumptions about how work gets done, how decisions are made and how technology supports performance.

When Warren Buffet announced his retirement, he emphasized that his successor would be responsible for leading Berkshire Hathaway’s business, while his son would serve as steward of the company’s culture — which Buffet defines as simplicity, trust, autonomy and long-term thinking.2 Culture can outlast individuals, but only when it is intentionally assessed and reinforced by leaders who protect core values while evolving the behaviors and unwritten norms that shape how work gets done.

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Successful organizations recognize that transferring knowledge and skills is only part of the equation. Transferring culture is equally, if not more, important. This means developing future leaders who demonstrate the right behaviors and embody and champion the company’s core values, but who are also able to shape and evolve them in the face of external disruptions.

Charlotte Schaller
Partner, Head of Assessment, Talent Solutions, United Kingdom

This principle is becoming even more critical as AI and advanced technologies accelerate skill shifts across industries. Transferring technical knowledge or functional expertise alone is no longer sufficient. Organizations must also ensure that future leaders carry forward the cultural traits that determine how decisions are made, how risk is managed, the ethical use of AI and how people learn and adapt as roles evolve.

Leaders who create conditions where people learn, collaborate and adapt with confidence are more likely to have a better return on their investment in technology and tools. The right culture accelerates adoption, adaptability and lasting transformation outcomes. Using assessment tools that can help evaluate culture with more rigor and objectivity are critical.

Learn More
Aon’s Thought Leaders
  • Melissa Champine
    Partner, Head of Assessment, Talent Solutions, North America
  • John McLaughlin
    Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Assessment, Talent Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa
  • Marius Grindeman
    Head of Product Strategy, Assessment Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa
  • Dhanur Oberai
    Commercial Leader for Assessment, Talent Solutions, Asia Pacific
  • Mary Ridge
    Director of Client Enablement, Assessment, Talent Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa
  • Charlotte Schaller
    Partner, Head of Assessment, Talent Solutions, United Kingdom

1 Aon’s 2025 Employee Sentiment Study
2 Warren Buffett Prepares His Middle Child for the Job of a Lifetime - WSJ

General Disclaimer

This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.

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