3 in 4 HR Leaders Still Cannot Prove AI's ROI: Keka HR Katalyst Poll

VMPL
Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], July 29: While organisations across India continue to accelerate investments in artificial intelligence, most HR leaders still cannot clearly demonstrate whether those investments are creating measurable business value.
That is among the key findings from live polls conducted during Keka HR Katalyst - The Summer Edition, the sixth edition of the enterprise PeopleOS Keka's flagship virtual HR conference held on 23rd July 2026. It brought together nearly 8,000 HR professionals and business leaders alongside 25+ speakers from organisations including the Adani Group, Reliance Jio, LSG Sky Chefs, Raymond, PVR INOX, Victoria's Secret & Co., Ather Energy and several other leading companies.
The conference, themed "The Performance Shift: Rebuilding High-Performance Organisations in the Human + AI Era," explored how organisations can move beyond AI experimentation to build genuinely high-performing businesses.
Among the strongest findings from live audience polls:
* Only 23% of HR leaders said they can currently demonstrate the ROI of their organisation's AI investments with hard numbers.
* Nearly 3 in 4 admitted they can either only partially measure AI's business impact, have not yet established clear ROI, or are not measuring it at all.
* 53% said their organisations are still experimenting with AI while its return on investment remains unclear.
* More than half (50.5%) identified choosing the right success metrics-not technology adoption-as the biggest barrier to proving AI ROI.
* When asked how confidently they could answer their CFO if questioned about the returns from HR technology investments, nearly half (48.8%) admitted they could only provide rough estimates rather than measurable outcomes.
The findings point to a clear shift in how organisations are approaching AI. While adoption is accelerating, conversations among business leaders have moved beyond implementation towards accountability, business outcomes and measurable value creation.
Throughout the conference, senior HR and business leaders repeatedly challenged organisations to rethink how success is measured in the AI era.
One of the strongest messages echoed across multiple sessions was that AI adoption alone is no longer a competitive advantage. Organisations that can measure impact, and redesign leadership, decision-making and performance around it, will ultimately pull ahead.
Another recurring theme was the growing need for human accountability despite increasing AI adoption. In one of the event's most debated sessions on AI governance, 58.6% of respondents said their biggest concern about giving AI greater authority in leadership decisions was the loss of human accountability, while only 3.8% said they would fully trust AI to make such decisions.
The debate also revealed how rapidly perspectives are evolving. Half the audience reported changing their position after the discussion, highlighting just how unsettled-and important-the conversation around AI governance has become for organisations.
The event also surfaced wider organisational challenges extending beyond technology.
Audience polls found that leadership decisions (33.3%) were viewed as the single biggest reason organisations lose performance, ahead of organisational culture, operating habits and structural issues. Meanwhile, 42.3% of respondents identified workplace flexibility as the hardest Gen Z expectation for employers to fulfil today.
Across discussions on performance, leadership and organisational transformation, speakers consistently argued that AI will amplify existing organisational strengths and weaknesses rather than solve them.
As one speaker observed during the conference: "AI doesn't transform organisations. Organisations transform with AI."
Commenting on the findings, Tapan Acharya, Chief Revenue Officer, Keka, said:
"For the past two years, organisations have focused on adopting AI. What we're now seeing is the next challenge emerging-proving that these investments are actually improving business performance. The conversations at Katalyst reflected a clear shift from experimentation to accountability. HR leaders are no longer asking 'How do we deploy AI?' They're asking 'How do we measure whether it's making our organisation better?' That's the conversation that will define the next phase of workplace transformation."
Now in its sixth edition, Keka HR Katalyst has become one of India's largest virtual HR conferences, bringing together thousands of HR and business leaders every year to exchange ideas on leadership, organisational performance and the future of work.
This year's edition featured over 15 sessions spanning AI strategy, leadership, talent, performance, organisational design and workforce transformation, with participation from leaders representing some of India's largest enterprises and fastest-growing companies.
About Keka:
Keka is a leading enterprise PeopleOS that helps organizations run people operations with consistency, compliance, and operational clarity. It brings together hiring, onboarding, time and attendance, performance management, payroll, and core HR workflows in a single system designed for scale.
Keka supports accurate and compliant payroll operations, helping organizations manage statutory requirements, reduce manual effort, and improve payroll reliability. The platform enables HR teams to standardize processes, managers to gain clear workforce visibility, and employees to access essential workflows through a secure, mobile-first experience.
Used by 10,000+ organizations across the world, Keka supports distributed and global workforces by enabling structured people processes in various roles, locations, and employment types. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Keka is built for growing and enterprise organizations that require dependable people systems to support business continuity and long-term growth.
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