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One in three Belgian workers is already using generative AI at work. Your people didn't wait for an official project to get started. HR & AI has long felt like a "later" topic, one pilot among many on the roadmap. In reality, it's already happening, with or without you. The problem is that individual AI use and real organizational transformation are two very different things. The 2026 figures make it clear: AI use in Belgium has never been higher, and its impact on team performance has never been measured less. Here's where things really stand.
The figure alone is striking. In 2025, 34.54% of Belgian companies used at least one AI technology, up from 24.71% a year earlier. This puts Belgium in the European top 5, well ahead of the EU average, which caps out at 19.95% (SPF Économie, 2026).
Belgium ranks among the top 5 AI-adopting countries in Europe.
This national figure, however, hides a considerable gap. Large companies use AI at a rate of 76.4%, compared to just 28.8% for smaller organizations. Belgian adoption is real, but it remains very uneven depending on company size.
This shift isn't limited to leadership or tech teams. One in three Belgian workers uses generative AI in their day-to-day work (Conseil Supérieur de l'Emploi, 2026).
And usage is intensifying. A quarter of Belgian workers now use AI regularly at work, up from 16% a year earlier, a 50% relative increase in twelve months (SD Worx, 2025).
In practice, your people are probably already using AI to draft an email, prepare a note, or automate a repetitive task. The question is no longer whether AI has entered your teams. The real question is whether you know it, and whether you're supporting it.
On the HR side, the change is just as dramatic. In 2019, 88% of HR professionals had no AI project on their agenda. By 2025, only 8% could say the same (Axys Consultants, 2025).
Daily AI use among HR professionals has also nearly tripled in a year. But one figure keeps enthusiasm in check: around 6 in 10 HR professionals remain reluctant to use these tools (Kelio, 2025).
There's a solid explanation for that, and it goes well beyond HR. A survey of nearly 6,000 leaders worldwide found that 89% see no measurable effect of AI on their company's productivity (NBER, cited by Gallup, 2026). An MIT report points the same way: 95% of enterprise AI pilots generated no measurable ROI (MIT Project NANDA, 2025). And in organizations that have adopted AI, only 12% of employees feel it has genuinely transformed the way they work (Gallup, 2026).
That same Gallup report identifies a factor that changes everything, a human factor rather than a technical one. When it's in place, employees are 8.7 times more likely to say AI has transformed their work. The problem: fewer than 1 in 3 employees say they benefit from it today.
This gap plays out directly on the ground. 39% of Belgian workers say they need AI training. Only 14% have actually received it (Conseil Supérieur de l'Emploi, 2026).
At the same time, 24% of Belgian workers fear AI will make part of their job obsolete (SD Worx, 2025).
And despite record adoption, Belgians are more pessimistic about AI than the global and European average (PwC Belgique, 2025).
So this isn't a technology problem. It's a support problem.
Individual AI adoption is exploding in Belgium, in companies and HR teams alike. But that adoption isn't yet translating into measurable results at organizational scale. Between the two, there's a missing link that makes all the difference — one a Belgian CPO, facing this exact shift in his own organization, knows well.
Flying blind on a topic that already touches every one of your teams is no longer really an option. Having a clear view of what's actually happening on the ground is precisely what turns individual adoption into collective performance.
🎥 Pierre Baron, Chief People Officer at Yago, shared an unfiltered account of how he steered this transition in his own company: what he'd do differently, the real blockers, and how AI has changed his day-to-day. Watch the full replay of the conversation with Margot Wuillaume (eBloom) here.
From HR digitalization to AI integration and new employee expectations, the human resources sector is rapidly changing. Based on responses from over 450 Belgian companies, our report gives you a head start to prepare your teams and strategy for the realities of tomorrow.
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