Who’s Afraid of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace?

Micosoft has released the third edition of the Work Trend Index, which focuses on three key aspects of the current relationship with work: how digital debt is negatively impacting innovation, how employees look to leverage AI and finally how everyone they will have to develop a natural ability to work with AI.

While most of the conversation around generative AI has so far focused on the negative impact it could have on jobs, the reality is that the current development of work will make AI a valuable ally for the majority of workers of concept. Since the start of the pandemic, the shift to digital and the growing volume of data that every company is relying on has increased the engagement for workers and this trend will only get worse. Making sense of all data and digital workflows requires such effort that many companies are concerned about employee burnout.

This is exactly where AI can come into play and help ease the burden of every day work.

“This next generation of artificial intelligence will take the drudgery out of work and unleash creativity,” said Satya Nadella, president and CEO of Microsoft. “There is tremendous opportunity for AI-powered tools to help alleviate digital debt, build AI aptitude, and empower employees.”

The constant influx of data, emails, meetings and notifications has led to a digital debt that affects us all. This overwhelming amount of information has exceeded our processing capacity. As the pace of work continues to pick up, everything seems important and we struggle to keep up. In fact, 64% of people report having difficulty finding the time and energy to do their job, and innovation and strategic thinking suffer. 60% of leaders are concerned about a lack of truly new ideas in their teams. Every minute spent managing digital debt is taken away from the creative work that leads to innovation. In a world where creativity is the new productivity, digital debt is not only a burden, it’s starting to impact business.

When looking at the study of time spent using the Microsoft 365 suite, nearly 60% is spent on communication, such as Teams meetings, email and Chat, the remaining 43% is spent authoring, with apps such as OneNote, PowerPoint or Excel. In a briefing, Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Modern Work and Business Applications at Microsoft said: “The data shows us that we love the ease of communication continuity, but we lack the time to focus on strategic thinking.”

Not all communication time is productive. There are still friction points that negatively impact where Microsoft believes AI can help. Meetings are a great example. For respondents, the number one obstacle to productivity is inefficient meetings, closely followed by too frequent ones. For most people, it is difficult to brainstorm in a virtual meeting (58%) or inform latecomers (57%), that next steps at the end of a meeting are unclear (55%) and that it is difficult to summarize what was said (56%).

According to Spataro, Copilot for meetings is one of the most loved features recently implemented for beta testers as it helps address some of the key issues raised in the study, such as helping organize information during and after the meeting to decide which meetings are important and which ones not.

But from my point of view the most interesting aspect of the study is how employees evaluate AI. Despite fears that AI is taking over jobs, data shows that employees are more excited about technologies that lighten their workload than worried about job loss. While 49% of people are concerned that AI will take its place, a higher percentage – 70% – would delegate as much work as possible to AI to reduce the effort.

People want AI to assist in nearly every aspect of their work. Not only are 3 out of 4 people comfortable using AI for administrative tasks (76%), but also for analytical (79%) and even creative work (73%). People also want AI to help them find the right information and answers (86%), summarize meetings and to-dos (80%), and plan their day (77%).

The optimism towards AI extends to its potential to enhance creativity. People believe it can help formulate ideas for their work (76%) and change their work (75%). The more familiar people are with AI, the more they see its potential to assist with meaningful aspects of their work. For example, 87% of workers in creative roles who are very familiar with AI said they would be comfortable using it for creative aspects.

Leaders also have a positive disposition towards AI. They are certainly looking at AI as an enabler for better work. They are twice as interested in using AI to increase productivity than they are in reducing headcount. In fact, downsizing has been the least appreciated benefit of AI among leaders. After “boosting productivity,” leaders’ top expectations for AI include assisting employees with repetitive tasks, improving their well-being, eliminating time spent on trivial tasks, enhancing employee skills, and accelerating the pace of work.

These data are certainly reassuring, but I must insist on the need for organizations to be transparent about their AI strategy, so that they can leverage all available talent, while promoting a responsible and ethical way to leverage artificial intelligence .

Moving to AI-first workloads will also require some level of training at both the technical level and the day-to-day workload level. Skills such as critical thinking and analytical judgment, complex problem solving will be key. The added value that talent will bring to AI collaboration will center on creativity and originality, as well as the personal experience we all have of both the company we work for and the business we run. The study shows that already today 60% of people say they do not currently have the right skills to do their job, and we cannot risk this number increasing. More importantly, organizations need to look to AI to accelerate and facilitate learning so that talent can gain the skills needed not only to tackle AI but also other hot topics in technology, from cloud to security.

There is no doubt that AI represents a huge opportunity for the workforce. However, to fully realize this potential and ensure that everyone can benefit from it will require intentional and deliberate action by the leaders of all organizations. This means actively working to integrate AI into the workplace in a way that empowers employees and improves their skills, rather than simply replacing them. It will take effort and commitment, but the potential benefits are immense.