By Kirstie McDermott
Generative AI isn’t just on the way for organizations, it’s here. And for many workers, it is already forming a large part of how they do their jobs.
This is being fueled, in part, by increasing workloads that many Americans are struggling to keep up with. A new report from Wrike highlights that workers are saying their workloads have grown by 31% in the last year. Leaders put that figure even higher, saying workloads have increased by 46% for their department or team.
Employees across the tech and financial services sectors in particular, who have witnessed wave after wave of layoffs, are now struggling under the weight of their own roles, as well as added responsibilities handed to them by departing colleagues.
Wrike’s report also found that U.S. workers are spending an average of 40.8 hours more each year making up for wasted time at work. Meanwhile, businesses report that almost 1.5 days a week are spent on unnecessary work, which is costing more than $15,000 for each employee annually.
The latest Wiley Workplace Intelligence report, “The Human Side of Artificial Intelligence: 3 Tips for Navigating the AI Era” underscores the fears workers have about the impact change brought on by AI may have on their jobs.
Ninety-six percent say they are experiencing some degree of stress about change at work, with 40% saying they are struggling to understand how to integrate AI into their work. Additionally, 75% say they lack confidence in how to utilize AI in their roles.
With just 34% of people managers saying they feel equipped to support AI integration in their organization, a big disconnect is emerging.
In order to cope with rising workloads, the solution for many workers is BYOAI, aka bring your own AI to work. Without official approval, many employees are using assistive tools such as
Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Co-Pilot or ChatGPT to do research, flesh out a document outline, parse data, summarize a meeting report, or even compose emails.
A recent Thomson Reuters report found that the average knowledge worker expects AI to save them four hours per week––which, the data says, is the equivalent of adding an extra colleague for every 10 employees.
The report also says that knowledge workers will save as many as 12 hours per week by the end of this decade through their use of assistive AI tools.
It is no wonder then that workers are adopting Generative AI with gusto, but they may not be fully aware of the risks. These can include submitting proprietary or confidential company information, which is then used to train the model they’ve used, unless they explicitly ask it not to.
Samsung banned use of generative AI tools after some employees used it to troubleshoot proprietary code and summarize internal meeting notes, and Verizon, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have also banned usage of ChatGPT over concerns about private data being shared.
This is a key reason why managers and employees need to be on the same page when it comes to the use of Generative AI at work.
But a recent report from Asana found that only 31% of companies have a formal AI strategy in place, and that “dangerous divides exist between executives and individual contributors in terms of AI enthusiasm, adoption, and perceived benefits”.
Improving that AI fluency is vital for business outcomes, as well as workers’ productivity. “It’s important for companies to provide employees—particularly managers—with information to help them understand what is happening and how best to deal with it,” says Dr. Tracey Carney, a Wiley researcher who headed the study.
“Effective change management includes both implementing the tools themselves and helping employees cope with the big transitions they are facing.”
From offering clear use cases for when, where and how Generative AI can be used, along with advice on how to ensure data privacy, companies have a way to go when it comes to advising their staff. Wiley’s report also says that it is crucial for organizations to maintain transparent communication around how AI will be implemented.
Getting it right matters, because the benefits outweigh the negatives. Asana’s report, for example, highlights the fact that employees using AI daily are the ones seeing the biggest gains, with 89% reporting a productivity boost.
If you’re finding that your own workplace isn’t moving quickly enough on Generative AI adoption, then it could be time to look for a role at a company which has a clear policy and guidelines––as well as the budget for the right tools for the job.
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