Dive Brief:
- Employees who use artificial intelligence on a regular basis are experiencing a “joy paradox,” whereby 67% say their job satisfaction is higher, but 41% also say their cognitive load has increased, according to a new survey from Boston Consulting Group.
- The study found that AI makes work both better and harder, with 42% of regular front-line users saying AI saves them a full workday every week. However, 47% of respondents also reported that they spent more time dealing with AI than doing actual work.
- Meanwhile, 72% of respondents said AI has significantly altered their jobs’ skills expectations, and 30% said AI agents have already been integrated into workflows, more than twice the number of people who said so last year.
Dive Insight:
The research determined that AI is changing the workplace more quickly than companies have been able to change. As a result, most businesses don’t know how to turn whatever time has been saved into organizational value.
“The first wave of AI focused on individual productivity,” said Vinciane Beauchene, a managing director and partner at BCG, and a co-author of the report. “The coming wave will need to transform collective work. Everyone is talking about AI replacing work, but it is in fact really about rethinking the human value-add inside.”
In terms of adoption, 74% of white-collar employees without managerial duties are now regular users, but 66% said they haven’t been given any meaningful guidance on what to do with the time they’re saving by using the tech. More than half said they don’t turn that time into meaningful work, which means companies aren’t doing anything strategic with the extra time.
“Our survey reveals a true managerial revolution in the age of AI,” she said. “Sixty-five percent of managers and leaders now believe agents will take over at least half of their job in the next three years and frontline workers see their jobs evolving towards more managing and directing AI.”
Despite the increasing pace of AI adoption, 52% of respondents said they “still have a limited understanding of what agents are,” per the report. In addition, oversight and accountability over AI has not kept pace with the tech’s implementation.
“The joy equation rewrites itself within a year of using AI,” said Sylvain Duranton, global leader of BCG X and a co-author of the report. “Early on, AI’s novelty and cognitive stretch fuel enjoyment, but that ‘AI honeymoon’ fades without strategic clarity.”
He said that employees succeed when AI strategy is clear and when they understand that strategy.
“Business value and employee enjoyment aren’t trade-offs,” Duranton said. “The organizations capturing the greatest business value are the same ones where employees enjoy work the most.”
Still, managers and employees don’t always agree on AI timelines, according to a recent study from Adecco Group. The research found that although 45% of leaders said they expect to integrate AI agents into the workplace within a year, only 30% of workers agreed.
Meanwhile, the pressure is on. AI has created higher expectations for entry-level workers, according to nearly half of U.S.-based HR leaders recently surveyed by D2L in partnership with Morning Consult.