The survey “How AI is transforming Nordic work life 2026” was conducted by Kantar Media on behalf of Solita and includes more than 3,000 office workers in Finland, Sweden and Denmark. 14 per cent of Swedish employees say their employer has no internal AI guidelines, compared with 10 per cent in Denmark and 7 per cent in Finland. At the same time, the report shows that countries where employees are more likely to follow AI guidelines also report higher use of AI at work.
Sweden lags behind Nordic neighbours on AI guidelines
Sweden stands out when it comes to compliance with AI guidelines. 63 per cent of Swedish employees state that they always follow their employer’s AI rules, compared with 68 per cent in Finland and 71 per cent in Denmark. In addition, there is a clear communication problem: 11 per cent of Swedish employees do not know whether their employer has any AI guidelines.
New EU requirements on AI governance
The EU’s new AI regulation, the EU AI Act, started to be applied in stages in 2025 and will be fully in force by 2027. For employers, the pressure is increasing to have control over how AI is used, which tools are in use and what AI skills employees need.
“Many Swedish companies have focused on getting started with AI quickly, but have not done the necessary groundwork. The result is that employees experiment without clear boundaries, which creates both security risks and uncertainty about what is actually acceptable at work. As the regulatory framework now tightens, the lack of governance becomes a concrete business risk,” says Rebecca Hammel, SVP AI & Cloud Development at Solita Sweden.
Denmark has the highest level of compliance
A key insight in the report challenges a common assumption: clear AI guidelines do not hinder usage – they drive it. Denmark has the highest level of guideline compliance among the three countries (71 per cent) and at the same time the highest AI usage: 65 per cent use generative AI at work and 24 per cent use it daily. The corresponding figures for Sweden are 53 and 14 per cent, and for Finland 62 and 17 per cent.
“This is the biggest misconception we encounter among business leaders right now. Guidelines are seen as something that slows things down, but the survey points to the opposite. When employees know what they are allowed to do, they dare to experiment more and invest time in learning the tools properly. It is the lack of clarity, not the guidelines, that actually slows things down,” says Rebecca Hammel.
Rapid improvement in Finland
Finland shows how quickly the situation can be turned around. In just one year, the share of employees who state that their organisation lacks AI guidelines has fallen from 21 to 7 per cent – a decrease of two-thirds. At the same time, the share who always follow the guidelines has increased from 58 to 68 per cent.
“Finland shows that this is not a structural problem that takes years to solve, but something that can change quickly when it is prioritised. Swedish companies have roughly a year to catch up before the most important parts of the EU AI Act start to be fully applied,” says Rebecca Hammel.
About the survey
The survey behind the report How AI is transforming Nordic work life 2026 was conducted by Kantar Media on behalf of Solita between 30 October and 11 November 2025. The survey includes more than 3,000 office workers in Sweden (n=1,037), Finland (n=1,042), and Denmark (n=1,019), using nationally representative online panels (ages 20–65).
The report builds on Solita’s 2024 survey in Finland and Sweden and, for the first time this year, includes Denmark, enabling comparisons across all three Nordic markets.
More information
- Solita Sweden, Rebecca Hammel, SVP AI & Cloud Development, [email protected], +46 761 69 31 23
- Solita Finland, Mikael Ruohonen, Business Lead - AI, Analytics & Agents, [email protected], +359 41 451 6808
- Solita Denmark, Snurre Jensen, Sales Director Data & AI, [email protected], +45 2265 8238
- Solita, Lasse Girs, Head of AI Transformation, [email protected], +358 40 591 8106