When Neil Sawyer, the senior vice-president and managing director for northern Europe at HP, reflects on the UK’s AI strategy, he spots a familiar pattern.
“We need to make sure that we don’t turn AI into a gold rush where we’re not clear about our objectives or the desired outcomes,” he says. “Making investments without any plan is a clear red flag.”
Sawyer, who began his career with HP in 2002 and rejoined in 2023 after two decades in the tech sector, has seen many hype cycles come and go. None, he suggests, has carried quite the same mix of promise and peril as AI.
“The rise of AI is one of the most exciting periods we’ve seen – and we’re right at the start of what’s going to take place over the next 10 years,” he says. “But we need to make sure that the investments being made today are scalable and relevant for the next three to five years, because that tipping point will tip very quickly.”
His advice for business leaders is straightforward: before you invest another pound in AI, make sure you are asking the right questions. Here are three to get you started.
1. Are our AI pilots secure and can our people trust them?
Sawyer is clear-eyed about AI adoption. “Security is paramount,” he says. “Trust and authenticity will probably have even greater value tomorrow than they do today.”
That makes AI a leadership issue, not just a technical matter. “Whatever is done with AI must be done in a way that people trust and that feels secure,” he says. “And that involves aligning to enterprises, businesses and investment communities that carry the same trust compass as we do as a society.”
Many organisations, he notes, still let staff experiment with public AI tools that sit outside corporate purview. “We need companies to provide the guardrails for employees to use these tools, because not all of them are necessarily what they say on the tin.”
Sawyer insists that education is as important as encryption. He explains that every HP employee completed a five-module training programme in cybersecurity and safety.
Boards must consider where and how AI is being used in their organisation, whether the right controls are in place and whether customers understand how their data is processed.
2. Is AI driving measurable business outcomes or just experiments?
Is AI really making a difference? Sawyer worries that too many pilot projects are driven by curiosity, not business need. “Making investments without any plan is a clear red flag,” he repeats.
He offers practical examples of where AI is already paying off. “A lot of the big accounting-software companies embraced AI very quickly,” he says. “That enables their finance users, the accountants, to produce better insights for the organisation.” Reporting, he explains, is no longer simply a matter of compiling an Excel spreadsheet. AI systems can learn the frequency and the structures of reporting and speed up the process. “Copying and pasting things from Excel into PowerPoint takes time – now that can be automated, enabling our accountancy teams to be more proactive and focus on improving revenue and profit for our business.”
In sales, too, the gains are tangible. At HP, the sales team monitors the trade press to see when big companies might be moving offices. “We use OpenAI to query all of these publications and we’re then able to plot out office moves for many of our clients and prospective clients for the next two or three years because we know that technology investment decisions are made at different times but often it’s predicated on the construction progress of buildings or dates of new office fit-outs.”
According to Sawyer, any AI deployments must move the needle on a business metric, whether that’s revenue growth, margins, customer satisfaction or productivity. And that accountability should not sit solely with the IT function.
“Ask a wider group of people how they are using AI and how they share those practices with their colleagues,” he advises. “There are people that really know how to get the most out of AI and people that perhaps need some coaching. If you share that among the collective, that produces lessons and competitive advantage.”
3. Are we improving the employee experience through technology?
The third question frames AI success in terms of its impact on people. Sawyer argues that technology shapes how employees feel about their work and, by extension, how long they stay with a company. “The use of technology in the workplace, and the way in which information is processed, directly impact employee satisfaction,” he says.
He points to the rise of digital employee experience (DEX) as a board-level concern, a theme reinforced by HP’s Work Relationship Index survey, which found that a minority of people describe their relationship with work as healthy. “We found that the insights you can get with a particular device, and also whether the technology provided to you is appropriate for how you’re working, is directly tied to your satisfaction or your frustrations with your employer,” Sawyer says.
That means CIOs are increasingly central to HR outcomes. “The HR manager is interested in DEX, the CEO is interested in DEX, the finance director is interested in DEX. They all want to know what benefits they’re gaining after they’ve invested all this money,” Sawyer explains.
For CEOs, the question is whether the technology being deployed actually enhances the working experience or simply adds complexity. The goal, Sawyer suggests, should be technology that makes work feel better, not just faster.
A leadership moment
For Sawyer, who recently discussed the government’s AI strategy with Peter Kyle, the UK business secretary, the lesson from the past 20 years of tech evolution is that the fundamentals rarely change. When asked what priorities he would set for the UK, or any business investing in AI, he lists three: “First of all, security is paramount. Second, with investment come opportunities to grow the economy. And the third area is being considerate of the resources that we have, both environmental and economic.”
That kind of balanced, long-term thinking is what will separate the winners from the losers in the AI era. “AI is there to deliver greater levels of productivity,” he says. “It’s there to make a difference in a secure and manageable way.”
And while technology keeps transforming the tools of business, Sawyer insists the human constants remain. “We shouldn’t forget,” he says, “that relationships, trust and authenticity still have unbelievable value from a human perspective.”
For UK business leaders steering their organisations through the AI revolution, that may be the most important reminder of all.
When Neil Sawyer, the senior vice-president and managing director for northern Europe at HP, reflects on the UK’s AI strategy, he spots a familiar pattern.
“We need to make sure that we don’t turn AI into a gold rush where we’re not clear about our objectives or the desired outcomes,” he says. “Making investments without any plan is a clear red flag.”
Sawyer, who began his career with HP in 2002 and rejoined in 2023 after two decades in the tech sector, has seen many hype cycles come and go. None, he suggests, has carried quite the same mix of promise and peril as AI.
