Dive Brief:
- More than half of U.S. workers said they’ve been given artificial intelligence-generated “workslop” from a manager or supervisor, according to new data from resume templates service Zety.
- This workslop, which “looks polished but lacks accuracy, substance, or proper review,” is eroding workplace confidence, with 85% of employees reporting that receiving it damages their trust in leadership, per the report.
- Forty-five percent of employees said that workslop has made them “more cautious about AI in the workplace,” according to Zety. Meanwhile, 74% said getting workslop lowered their trust in the quality of the sender’s work.
Dive Insight:
According to Zety’s survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, when low-quality AI work comes from people in leadership positions, the effects “can ripple across teams, signaling unclear expectations and weakening confidence in decision-making.”
The report said that when leaders rely on low-effort output, it can reshape how their authority is perceived. As a result, employees may begin to question both the work itself and the level of care behind it.
Meanwhile, a February report from Zety found that 21% of employees said workslop is somewhat acceptable and that it gets overlooked if deadlines are met. That report said only 9% of employees found workslop to be completely acceptable.
Yet employees who regularly use AI tools lose almost 40% of their workplace productivity gains to fixing AI-generated mistakes, according to recent research from enterprise AI platform Workday. That report found that although AI can help people complete their work faster, only 14% said they “consistently achieve net-positive outcomes from AI use,” with the highest levels of AI-related rework reported by human resource workers.
In its new report, Zety said that employee hesitation regarding AI signals “a broader readiness gap,” as many workers are asked to experiment with tools without being given well-defined guidance. “That disconnect can create uneven performance and uncertainty about what ‘good’ actually looks like,” the report said.
Companies that ignore the impact of workslop may face lasting consequences, such as weaker employee trust in AI (57%), lower productivity (51%) and damage to company reputation (46%), per the report.
However, workers said it was possible to ameliorate the potential damage. Workers said setting clearer quality standards, providing better AI training, implementing tools to detect errors more quickly, being given more time to review and edit AI output and seeing stronger accountability for mistakes could help.
Teams with consistent standards “are better positioned to maintain credibility as AI becomes more embedded in daily work,” the report said, adding that strong oversight “helps protect both performance and reputation.”