South Africa, June 12 -- The most visible consequence has been headcount reduction. But organisations that treated AI as a staffing equation are discovering that removing people without rethinking how work gets done does not create a smarter business. It creates a thinner one.

A 2025 report from MIT's Media Lab found that despite $30 to $40bn in global enterprise spending on generative AI, 95% of organisations are seeing no measurable return on investment. McKinsey's 2025 State of AI survey tells a similar story. While 88% of organisations now use AI in at least one function, only around a third are scaling it meaningfully, and just 6% qualify as high performers delivering real bottom line impact. Meanwhile, Gartner found that only 5% of...