Nearly Half of Employees Hide Workplace AI Use, Pointing to a Need for Openness and Policy Clarity

  • Nearly half of employees are entering company-related information into public AI tools to complete their tasks and hiding their AI use, out of fear of seeming lazy, risky, or non-compliant
  • 1 in 10 employees describe AI adoption in their workplace as “the Wild West,” unregulated, unclear, and out of control

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, August 13, 2025 Laserfiche, the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation, today released new survey findings on AI adoption in the workplace, revealing that nearly half of Americans (49%) who use AI at work keep it to themselves, with 15% deliberately avoiding telling their manager.

As AI tools become more embedded in daily life, the survey reveals a workplace reality that is far less aligned. While many employees are eager to harness AI to boost productivity, inconsistent policies and cultural hesitation are fueling secrecy around AI adoption at work. Employees who are hiding their AI use worry it will be seen as lazy (16%), risky (15%), or out of step with company policy (16%).

A Mixed Workforce Mood

Employee sentiment around AI remains divided. While 21% are optimistic, and 22% say AI already helps them work faster or more efficiently, others are more cautious. Nineteen percent are skeptical, citing concerns about accuracy or misuse, and 13% are anxious or resistant, uneasy about the risks and consequences of incorporating AI into their workflows.

Younger generations are more optimistic about AI at work: 24% of Gen Z and 20% of Millennials say they see its potential but are still learning how to use it, compared to just 10% of Baby Boomers.

A New Frontier — with New Risk

Only one in three employees (36%) say their workplace has clear policies and approved AI tools in place. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 describe their organization’s AI environment as “the Wild West,” an unregulated space where people do what they want.

That lack of structure has consequences. Nearly half of employees (46%) admit to pasting company information into public AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, sometimes without knowing if the content is sensitive or confidential. Many turn to these tools in an attempt to gain a competitive edge (24%) or because their company’s own tools are too limited or hard to use (23%).

Older employees are significantly more cautious about using unofficial AI tools at work: 69% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, and 35% of Gen X, avoid these tools, compared to just 21% of Millennials and 17% of Gen Z.

The Path Forward: Build Culture Before Crisis

These findings highlight a growing AI governance gap. Usage is outpacing policy, and fear is replacing transparency. To solve this, organizations must do more than roll out AI tools. They need to foster a culture where employees feel informed, supported, and aligned on how and when to use them.

“When employees feel like AI is their ‘dirty little secret,’ that’s not a tech problem, it’s a leadership one,” said Karl Chan, CEO of Laserfiche. “Many employees are eager to embrace AI to work but often resort to unofficial tools when company-approved options are too limited or difficult to use. Innovative organizations can meet employee needs and unlock new potential by implementing guidelines, and adopting IT-vetted, intuitive AI tools that help employees reach productivity goals.”

Methodology

The survey was conducted by Veridata Insights and commissioned by Laserfiche. It included 1,000 U.S.-based individuals aged 18 and over, census-balanced by age and gender.

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche is a leading enterprise platform that helps organizations digitally transform operations and manage their content with AI-powered solutions. Through scalable workflows, customizable forms, no-code templates and AI-enabled capabilities, the Laserfiche® document management platform accelerates how business gets done. Trusted by organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — Laserfiche empowers teams to boost productivity, foster collaboration, and deliver a superior customer experience at scale. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Laserfiche operates globally, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Laserfiche Named a Leader in Nucleus Research Content Services and Collaboration Value Matrix 2025

Laserfiche is a Leader for the 10th consecutive year, ranks highest in usability.

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, JULY 23, 2025Laserfiche — the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation — is a Leader in the Nucleus Research Technology Value Matrix for Content Services and Collaboration for the 10th year in a row. Among the vendors evaluated, Laserfiche ranks highest overall in usability. Download a copy of the report here.

“As a leader in this year’s Value Matrix, Laserfiche was rated highest in usability for its AI productivity tools, new administration hub, process automation and integration capabilities,” said Evelyn McMullen, research manager at Nucleus Research and author of the report.

Nucelus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix™ 2025.

CSC as a Strategic Advantage: AI-powered Information Management

Recently released Laserfiche AI-powered features are aimed at boosting productivity even further and enabling automation at scale. Smart Fields, an out-of-the-box intelligent capture tool, allows customers to extract data automatically using natural language instructions, no matter the source or format. Smart Chat provides an intuitive chat interface that enables users to quickly gain insights from their repository content.

“As AI matures at an accelerated pace, vendors in the CSC market have the unique advantage of managing both structured and unstructured data from across the entirety of an organization,” the report’s Market Overview states.

Laserfiche AI features alongside powerful workflow automation, information governance and records management tools create new opportunities for organizational efficiency. Customers across industries use Laserfiche to increase productivity, create competitive advantage and drive growth.

“Laserfiche gives us the forms and workflow processes as well as data integration that enable efficiency at scale,” said Airline Hydraulics Chief Technology Officer Todd Schnirel. “Our Laserfiche-powered process improvements have supported us in achieving a significant increase in net revenue while adding very little operating expense.” 

“Being ranked a leader for 10 consecutive years is a testament to our product innovation,” said Thomas Phelps, senior vice president of corporate strategy and CIO at Laserfiche. “Our top ranking in usability reflects our core value of putting people first and our commitment to delivering intuitive solutions that empower users.”

To learn more about Laserfiche’s position in the Content Services and Collaboration market, download the report here.

About Laserfiche

Laserfiche is a leading enterprise platform that helps organizations digitally transform operations and manage their content with AI-powered solutions. Through scalable workflows, customizable forms, no-code templates and AI-enabled capabilities, the Laserfiche® document management platform accelerates how business gets done. Trusted by organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — Laserfiche empowers teams to boost productivity, foster collaboration, and deliver a superior customer experience at scale. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Laserfiche operates globally, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. 

Emirates National Oil Company

Since its establishment in 1993, Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) has provided the energy behind Dubai’s phenomenal growth. With clients ranging from military bases to big-name manufacturing agencies across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ENOC touches almost every facet of the Emirate’s development and puts its name firmly on the overseas arena. Today, ENOC owns directly and indirectly more than twenty subsidiaries.

ENOC operates through five business segments:

  • Supply, Trading & Processing: Condensate and gas processing and oil trading.
  • Terminals: Storage for various petroleum and chemical products.
  • Marketing: Marketing of aviation fuel, lubes, chemicals and industrials products.
  • Retail: Retailing fuel and non-fuel services at retail stations.
  • Exploration & Production: Development and production of oil and gas.

ENOC first began investigating enterprise content management (ECM) for one of its subsidiaries, Emirates Petroleum Product Company (EPPCO), which was having a hard time managing customer documents. Piles of paperwork were scattered on different employees’ desks, making it hard to locate documents on demand and promptly respond to customer requests.

Although a number of departments within ENOC were already using Microsoft SharePoint, it didn’t meet EPPCO’s needs due to its lack of a scanning solution. After hearing about Laserfiche through Laserfiche reseller Global Technology Services (GTS), ENOC conducted a thorough evaluation of the software to see if it would meet EPPCO’s needs.

According to Ram Mohan Narayanan, Manager of Planning and Performance Management in ENOC’s IT department, “We did an onsite study of the Laserfiche implementation at the Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Company, where GTS had implemented Laserfiche to archive customer billing documents. It was clear that Laserfiche had provided a great advantage for the utility company, which gave us the confidence to go with Laserfiche.”

The fact that Laserfiche is fully supported in Arabic also played a role in ENOC’s selection process.

Improving Customer Service

To better manage its customer documents, EPPCO was the first part of the organization to implement Laserfiche. EPPCO serves 75 million customers each year through its network of more than 170 ENOC/EPPCO service stations across the UAE.

EPPCO has built its brand on innovation. As such, it launched the first fuel card in the UAE in 1991. To ensure the continued success of the fuel card program, EPPCO’s card marketing department wanted to accelerate customer service. With roughly 300 new documents coming in each day, storing everything in file cabinets was costly and inefficient, and employees were having difficulty finding the right paper documents to process them in a timely manner.

By implementing Laserfiche to store customer request documents and automate the document approval process, Card Marketing is now able to deliver much faster customer service. In addition, it has integrated Laserfiche with a variety of other software applications to improve the customer experience as follows:

  • By integrating with its interactive voice response (IVR) software, EPPCO has enabled its fuel card customers to fax their invoices through the IVR system.
  • These invoices are generated in an Oracle management application and moved into Laserfiche as PDF files.
  • Monthly statements are automatically sent from Laserfiche to customers via an integration with RightFax.

In addition, an IVR-based request from the customer triggers a that automatically sends the PDF invoice to the customer on demand.

“Not only have we improved our customer service, but we’ve reduced our papers expenses,” said Narayanan.

Increasing Efficiency across ENOC

The use of Laserfiche soon spread beyond EPPCO to a number of departments within ENOC. In the past, ENOC had relied on file cabinets to store paper documents. Imaged documents, meanwhile, were stored on a shared “U:\” drive, and electronic content was managed in SharePoint.

This lack of a centralized content management strategy was inefficient, costly and prevented the automation of paper-based business processes. ENOC needed a standard systems architecture and methodology for enterprise-wide content management.

In particular, ENOC’s internal audit department has saved time and money by automating the submission of its Employee Acknowledgement and of Interest forms, which all 1,500 ENOC employees need to sign and submit to the department each year.

Narayanan explains that the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration, a two-way integration that enables paper-based capture and DoD 5015.2-certified records management in a SharePoint environment, allows employees to scan these forms directly into SharePoint, where they are converted into PDFs and automatically filed in the correct HR folders in the Laserfiche repository.

In addition to the benefits Laserfiche has brought to the internal audit department:

  • The HR department uses as a secure, centralized location for all employee documents.
  • The department validates, stores and distributes supplier invoices to their respective PO owners using Laserfiche Workflow
  • Procurement uses to create and store contracts and vendor management documents.
  • The chief executive and general manager office use Laserfiche to track and store all incoming and outgoing correspondence.

Narayanan estimates that ENOC realized a full return on its Laserfiche investment in just eight months. “By using Laserfiche to scan and store paper files, we save at least 6,000 hours of staff time a year, which translates to US $240,000. We’ve also been able to eliminate US $28,800 in paper storage costs per year.”

Sina Khoory, ENOC’s Group IT Manager, adds, “Using Laserfiche Rio, EPPCO and a number of departments in the ENOC group have gained centralized control over our data. Rio’s powerful tools and the Laserfiche SharePoint Integration have simplified information sharing and automated operations between departments.”