AI Is Your Newest Hire. Manage It Like One
CIO, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Firms that onboard AI like a new hire, with context, connections and self-assessment, get results others miss, says a CIO.com author.
Citing an August 2026 Gartner report in which 40% of C-level executives say AI is operationalized in some processes but only 13% have measurable results at scale, the author argues companies have 'hired' AI without onboarding it.
Brandon Hall Group research shows strong onboarding boosts new-hire productivity by over 70%, and successful firms likewise define an AI's persona, operating context, self-assessment and connections to people and systems.
As an example, the author describes WorkRadar, an internal agent connected to Outlook, Teams, Confluence, Asana and SharePoint that summarizes missed work.