Knowledge workers are leaning on generative AI as their workloads mount

Americans are struggling at work, according to a new report from Wrike.

It found that workers are saying their workloads have grown by 31% in the last year. Leaders put the 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.

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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 $15,138.03 per employee per year.

The solution for many workers to help them cope is in adopting AI tools. This has led to the rise of BYOAI, aka bring your own AI to work.

This results in employees’ use of assistive tools like Gemini, Claude, Co-Pilot or ChatGPT to do research, flesh out a document outline, 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, titled Future of Professionals, 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.

Organizations are unprepared

Even as workers themselves adopt generative AI to save time and streamline their tasks and processes, a disconnect is widening between what workers are doing, and what companies expect, or allow.

A State of AI at Work 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”.

Additionally, the research has identified that just 13% of organizations have developed shared AI guidelines. “It’s past time for organizations to step up and establish strong AI policies and principles to guide responsible deployment,” the report’s authors say.

It is for these reasons that Samsung banned use of generative AI tools after some employees used it to troubleshoot proprietary code and summarize internal meeting notes.

Verizon, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have all banned usage of ChatGPT over concerns about private data being shared too. More recently, Elon Musk said he was ready to ban Apple devices at his companies if the company goes ahead with an install of ChatGPT onto iPhones. He says this would be an “unacceptable security violation.”

Research from Deloitte concurs, finding that generative AI users aren’t fully aware of the risks, which can include inaccuracies and biases. It found that 25% of people believe it is always factually accurate, and 26% think AI is unbiased.

For workers though, this may not matter. The job needs to get done, by whatever means necessary, something Costi Perricos, partner and global generative AI lead at Deloitte supports: “Whether organizations have supportive or strict policies on the use of generative AI, it is clear that improving business AI fluency is vital.”

Perricos recommends that generative AI tool deployment should go alongside a comprehensive learning and development program, including training on ethics and responsible use, and guidance on how to get the most value from these tools.

Getting it right matters. Asana’s report highlights the fact that employees using AI daily are the ones seeing the biggest gains, with 89% reporting a productivity boost. For employees, working in an organization that is slow to act or which has unclear guidelines can be frustrating.

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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