Dive Brief:
- Forty percent of productivity gains in the workplace due to artificial intelligence are being lost to rework and low-quality output, according to new research from enterprise AI platform Workday.
- The report found that while AI is helping employees finish tasks more quickly, only 14% of workers said they “consistently achieve net-positive outcomes from AI use,” meaning that only a small percentage use AI to improve the quality of their work or support higher-value judgment and decision-making. Human resource workers reported the highest levels of AI-related rework (38%).
- For every 10 hours of efficiency gained through AI, almost four hours end up being lost to fixing the output, per the research. “As a result, roughly 37% of the time saved through AI is being offset by rework,” the report said. In total, Workday estimated that highly engaged employees lost 1.5 weeks of time per year fixing AI outputs.
Dive Insight:
The findings showed “an AI tax on productivity,” because employees said they’re spending “significant time” correcting, clarifying or rewriting the low-quality content AI generates.
“Most leaders focus on gross efficiency — how much time AI saves,” the report said. “But this metric alone obscures the real picture. When time lost to rework is taken into account, the net value of AI is often much lower than expected.”
The report, conducted in November 2025 by Hanover Research, analyzed 3,200 leaders and employees globally at companies with at least $100 million in annual revenue and with 150 or more employees. It found that low-quality AI output is present wherever AI is adopted and not accompanied by updates to skillsets, role designs and support, and the problem isn’t limited to a specific industry or region.
Yet many employees reported a lack of AI training. Among employees who use AI the most, only 37% said they had greater access to training, per Workday. Nearly 9 in 10 organizations reported that fewer than half of their roles had been updated with AI-related skills.
Nonetheless, AI adoption is high. Eighty-seven percent of workers said they used AI at least a few times a week, and 46% said they used it daily. In addition, 77% of employees said they’re more productive because of their AI use over the past 12 months, and 85% said they “personally save between 1 and 7 hours per week on their tasks.”
“However, these gross efficiency metrics mask a more uneven reality,” the report said. “In practice, the highest productivity drag concentrates among employees who use AI most frequently.”
The report found that more than 90% of daily users said AI increases their confidence of success in future roles, but these same employees are also “the most likely to spend time verifying, correcting, and refining AI output,” with 77% saying they audited AI work with the same or more rigor than human work.
When productivity increases, 39% of companies put their AI savings back into technology, while only 30% put the savings into employee development.
Meanwhile, a recent report from business and technology firm Gartner found that AI was causing negative psychological impacts on employees.