AI is changing how work gets done – and sometimes, not for the better. Successful adoption requires more than just giving employees access to new AI tools. This week’s research highlights three AI workplace studies every leader should know, and what actions to take for their organizations.
AI Is Saving Time, But Employees Receive Little Direction On What To Do Next
BCG surveyed over 11,000 global employees and found that while 42% of employees using AI regularly save a full workday or more per week, 66% receive little or no guidance on what to do with the time they save. Many companies will point to strategic work becoming more important as AI tools offload administrative tasks. Yet, more than half of these survey respondents did not direct their time saved to strategic initiatives.
This is an opportunity for leaders to clearly, and consistently, communicate the strategic endeavors of their business. Leaders need to make a framework of what the new way of working looks like for incorporating AI tools into their workflows. It is a leadership responsibility to understand and communicate their AI strategy to employees. Using AI can reduce time spent on work tasks, but the company will not reap the real benefits of time-saving tools without an AI workflow game plan.
Employers Think Employees View AI Positively, Yet 42% Feel Like They Are ‘Cheating’
Employment Hero, an Australian-based AI employment operating system company, found that while 60% of employees think their employees view AI in a positive light, 42% of AI-using employees say doing so feels like cheating. Their aptly named ‘The AI Paradox’ research report of 8,800 people across Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Canada also revealed that 63% of employees feel that AI has created more work checking outputs. This bottleneck and disconnect between company perspective and employee AI-aversion underscores the need for more AI training and knowledge gap assessments. Although 31% of these surveyed companies state ‘AI skills’ as the top entry-level hire attribute, if your current employees feel uncomfortable using it, who then is leading the training?
Employees Using AI Lose 6.4 Hours A Week To ‘Botsitting’
Botsitting, or the time spent feeding AI context, supervising its output, debugging AI mistakes, and cleaning it up after a handoff, has become a costly side effect of AI. The Work AI Institute by Glean, an AI enterprise software company, surveyed 3,000 U.S., U.K., and Australia full-time digital workers to find that 6.4 hours are being lost every week to botsitting. This takes a toll on employees. Of the employees using AI in more than 50% of their work, 82% admitted to delivering AI-generated work that they do not fully understand, have not verified, or cannot confidently stand behind. The slog of unstructured AI is real – and leaders need to be made aware of when a tool is helping or hurting their employees.
The ‘plug and play’ model is not going to work for AI. Organizations wanting to positively benefit from AI need to understand what successful, and unsuccessful, implementation looks like. Increased training, employee check-ins, and awareness of AI limitations will help foster a positive working relationship with AI. If leaders want AI embedded within their company workflows, they need a strong understanding of both their employees and the AI tools to have a seamless integration.