.png)
Nine honorees recognized for proving that AI can make work more human, not less
MeBeBot has named the winners and finalists of its first Humanity in AI Awards, a global program recognizing the HR, Operations, and IT leaders and teams proving that artificial intelligence can serve people, not just processes. The honorees were revealed during a live virtual ceremony on August 6, 2026, in front of nominees, judges, and the wider MeBeBot community.
The program started with a question the whole industry keeps skipping past: when a company rolls out AI, do the people using it actually end up better off?
The numbers suggest that too often, they don't. According to Gartner's Global Labor Market Survey (1Q 2026), 88% of employees who have company-approved AI tools still reach for their own personal ones instead, usually because their organization never gave them the right tools or never trained them on the ones it did. Gartner's December 2025 research found that only 20% of executives believe their workforce is truly AI-ready, even though 65% of employees say they are excited to use AI at work. And in WRITER's 2026 Workplace Intelligence survey, 75% of executives admitted their AI strategy is "more for show" than real guidance.
Read together, those figures point to the same thing. The problem is not that employees are resisting AI. It is that most organizations have rolled it out without bringing their people along. The Humanity in AI Awards were built to find the leaders who are doing the harder work of closing that gap, and to show, with named examples, that it can be done.
Nominations were open worldwide to HR, Operations, and IT leaders and teams at organizations with 200 or more employees. The entry form took about ten minutes, and both self-nominations and peer nominations were welcome.
Three judges scored every nomination independently against a 100-point rubric: six criteria shared across all categories, worth 70 points, and three criteria specific to each category, worth the remaining 30. Each criterion was rated 1 to 5 against detailed anchors. No judge compared notes with another until a reconciliation stage, where any meaningful disagreement was talked through before finalists were named. One line from the judges' scoring guide set the standard for every score: "The unit of recognition is a team, not an individual leader, a vendor, or a tool."
This year's panel:
Nominees competed in three categories, each capturing a different moment in an AI rollout: the preparation before deployment, the daily experience once the tools are live, and the governance that holds it all together. Each category produced one winner and two finalists.
AI Literacy & Enablement (Up skilling and Training) recognizes the leader or team who brought their workforce along through training, skill-building, and communication that prepared people rather than surprised them.
AI Implementation (Human-centric Employee Experience) recognizes the leader or team whose AI deployment measurably improved daily work, with less friction, faster answers, and more time for the work that matters.
AI Trust & Governance (Responsible and Ethical AI) recognizes the leader or team who built the most thoughtful framework for responsible AI, covering policy, transparency, audits, and cross-functional oversight.
2026 Finalists
"Thank you to every nominee, nominator, and judge who made this inaugural program possible," said Beth White, Founder & CEO of MeBeBot. "You've shown that 'humanity in AI' isn't a tagline. It's already happening inside real workplaces today."
MeBeBot intends to run the Humanity in AI Awards every year, widening the search for organizations proving that AI adoption and human enablement can, and should, move together.
That same belief drives MeBeBot's own product work. The company's Smart Search AI, launched July 16, 2026, now surfaces faster, more accurate answers across a wider range of company sources, including SharePoint and OneDrive, Confluence, and Google Drive. It rests on the same human-in-the-loop idea the Awards celebrate: AI that gets people better answers, faster, without cutting them out of the process.
If you missed the LIVE ceremony, you can watch it here
Discover more from MeBeBot's New Center, packed with press releases, interviews, and so more.
Leveraging AI & automation to innovate employee support delivery.
.svg)
.svg){kind=icon}
.svg){kind=icon}