Dive Brief:
- CIOs working to accelerate workflows with AI are at risk of amplifying busy work if employees lack guidance, according to a Slack report published Monday, which surveyed more than 10,000 desk workers.
- If AI lightened their weekly workload, workers are most likely to focus more time on administrative tasks instead of high-value work, such as skills development, innovation or networking with colleagues, according to the survey.
- “The reality is that these are the very inputs that AI has the potential to augment and replace, so if we don’t take the time to really rethink productivity and focus on outcomes, employees are going to feel incentivized to fill that time with more performative work,” Slack SVP of Research and Analytics Christina Janzer said.
Dive Insight:
Productivity gains have lured enterprise leaders into experimenting with AI, but a focus on volume rather than quality could water down the ROI on implementations and waste valuable resources.
“This is really a symptom of a much bigger challenge,” Janzer said. “Humans are naturally programmed to do the work that they think is going to be valued, the work that they think is incentivized by their employers.”
Leaders who highlight metrics such as the number of emails sent or activities in progress can misdirect employees into overvaluing quantity, according to Janzer.
As CIOs roll out tools to employees, organizations must adjust the way they work. AI tools require employees to gain new skills, including hallucination detection and understanding the ethical implications of using generated outputs.
Training is a key part of the plan for most organizations to get workers up to speed. Employees trained in AI were 19 times more likely to report that AI improved their productivity, according to the report.
Amid the period of change, employees want managers and executives to help prioritize tasks as the technology is embedded in workflows.
The majority of desk workers said they experience burnout once a month or more, according to the Slack report. Workers estimate they spend around one-third of their day on low-value tasks.
“This is really a symptom of a much bigger challenge,” Janzer said. Leaders must rethink how they view and talk with employees about productivity, focusing on outcomes instead of inputs, Janzer said.
