AI Resistance Is Now the Biggest Workforce Risk for UAE Employers

Marsh's People Risk 2026 report surveyed 103 HR and risk professionals in the UAE as part of a global study of 4,517 respondents. The finding that should concern every people leader: mindset, not malware, is now the bigger threat.

| Written by Tripti Mehta

For the first time, employee resistance to AI has overtaken cybersecurity threats as the most pressing workforce risk facing UAE organisations, according to Marsh's 2026 People Risks Report. The shift marks a significant departure from two years ago, when rising healthcare and benefit costs led the list, followed by technology skills shortages and diversity-related concerns.

Globally, the report's findings tell a similar story. Lack of confidence and mindset to adopt AI ranks as the #6 people risk worldwide, rising to #3 among the C-suite, out of 25 risks studied across five pillars: technological change, talent and leadership, protection and sustainability, governance and compliance, and health and safety.

Why Mindset, Not Technology, Is The Real Barrier

The report is clear that the obstacle to AI value is rarely the technology itself. Most organisations still expect employees to fold AI into existing workflows rather than reimagining the work itself, and without strategic vision, work redesign, and governance that keeps pace with change, AI risks remaining peripheral: improving individual parts of the business without transforming the whole.

In the UAE specifically, the response has been concrete. Around 38% of surveyed organisations are training employees to identify AI-generated misinformation, 34% are addressing AI-related cybersecurity vulnerabilities, 33% are encouraging staff to critically evaluate AI-generated content, and 32% are working to reduce data privacy risks tied to AI tools.

Adel Alderi, Business Development Leader at Mercer Marsh Benefits UAE, framed the shift plainly: people risks in the UAE can no longer be treated as secondary workforce issues. They are now directly linked to business continuity, employee wellbeing, digital transformation, and organisational resilience.

The Collaboration Gap HR Cannot Afford To Ignore

The report surfaces a structural weakness sitting underneath all of this. Globally, only 14% of Risk and HR professionals believe their organisation's risk maturity is "transformative" or fully embedded in strategy and culture. In the UAE, the picture is similarly uneven; 40% of companies report full collaboration between HR and risk management teams, another 40% describe it as partial, and 20% say coordination remains minimal.

This matters because the data shows collaboration is not a soft metric. Organisations with strong Risk-HR alignment report mitigation measures that are, on average, 15 percentage points more effective than those still at an experimental stage, spanning everything from leadership development and succession planning to employee listening tools and reward communication.

Healthcare Costs And Mental Health Have Not Gone Away

AI may have taken the top spot, but the older risks have not disappeared, they have simply been joined by a new one. Globally, increasing health and benefit costs rank as the #5 people risk, and 90% of Risk and HR leaders say rising health and benefit costs are the risk most likely to materialise in the next one to two years.

In the UAE, 62% of employers expect healthcare and benefit costs to keep rising, the same proportion believes unsafe physical or psychological working conditions could seriously affect organisational performance, and close to 29% say current mental health support for employees remains inadequate. Globally, the picture is starker still: 61% of Risk and HR professionals say their organisations do not provide highly effective, employer-sponsored mental health care.

Simona Musat, Multinational Leader at Mercer Marsh Benefits UAE, connected the dots directly: as healthcare costs continue to rise, organisations are recognising that workforce health is directly linked to business resilience.

M&A Workforce Due Diligence Is Now A Top-Three

UAE Risk

A less obvious finding from the report: inadequate workforce due diligence during mergers and acquisitions ranks as the UAE's third-largest people risk. Organisations that fail to evaluate workforce-related issues, legacy pay arrangements, long-term liabilities, cultural fit, during a transaction face greater financial, operational, and reputational exposure once the deal closes. As M&A activity continues across the region, this is becoming a strategic consideration rather than a legal afterthought.

What HR Leaders Should Take From This

The report's broader argument is that people risks no longer sit in isolation, they cascade. Inadequate leadership skills, for instance, was found to trigger or worsen more downstream risks than any other single factor, from labour shortages to mental health deterioration to flawed investment decisions.

For HR leaders in the UAE, the practical takeaway is threefold: treat AI mindset-building as seriously as AI procurement, close the gap between HR and risk functions through structured collaboration rather than informal coordination, and resist the urge to default to blunt cost-containment on health and benefits when the data shows it increases risk over time rather than reducing it.

Source: Marsh, People Risk 2026: The Human Edge: Transforming Risk into Strategic Advantage; Mercer Marsh Benefits UAE; Khaleej Times