The adoption of Artificial Intelligence has the potential to fundamentally change the world of work. Companies around the world are increasingly turning to AI to drive efficiency gains, productivity improvements and innovation.
Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index took a closer look at AI in the workplace. 31,000 people from 31 countries were surveyed on the topic of AI. The main focus was on the potential of AI that has not yet been exploited by companies, employees’ attitudes toward AI, and the opportunities that AI provides both companies and employees in their daily work.
In this blog article, we summarize the most important points of this year’s Microsoft Work Trend Index for you and would like to provide you with recommendations for action that will help you use AI more effectively in order to work even more productively.
Learning 1: Promote innovation and creativity through AI
The amount of data, emails or meetings exceeds our ability to process everything while still getting ahead at work. The possibilities for communication are greater than ever before. Yet, finding time to focus and pursue your actual tasks is all the more difficult as the pace of work increases.
The biggest productivity killers according to Microsoft surveys:
- 1st place: Inefficient meetings
- 2nd place: Lack of clearly defined goals
- 3rd place: Having too many meetings
- 4th: Feeling uninspired
- 5th: Information you are looking for is not found
The Work Trend Index surveys found that two-thirds of people (64%) struggle to devote enough time and energy to their work. These individuals are 3.5 times more likely to also have problems with innovation and strategic thinking. Every minute we are busy in this jungle of emails, data, and processing meetings means one less minute of creative work that could lead to innovation.
Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft sees AI as a possible solution to unleash creativity and innovation by taking away time-consuming work processes.
“This new generation of AI will eliminate the drudgery of work and unleash creativity.”
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Here’s how to act:
- Identify the productivity disruptors in your organization by talking to employees
- Ask yourself: What does the new workday look like with the use of AI?
- Encourage your employees to use AI in meetings and discussions to make the best use of summaries, transcripts or recordings
Learning 2: Employees aren’t afraid of AI – they want to use it
“It’s fascinating that people are more excited about AI saving them from burnout than they are worried about losing their jobs because of it.”
Adam Grant, author
Instead of fearing AI will eventually replace jobs, more employees are asking how they can delegate their work to AI so they can devote their time to more important tasks. The stated uses for how employees want to use AI are many and varied. From administrative to research and analysis tasks, employees want to use AI in a variety of ways.
The evaluations also revealed that companies do not want to use AI to replace employees, but rather to increase their productivity!
In the figure are the answers to the following question:
What would you value most about AI in the workplace?
Here’s how to act:
- Let your employees experiment with AI. Create the framework to test AI responsibly.
- Look for appropriate AI solutions to help you address the vulnerabilities and challenges in your organization
Learning 3: Every employee should be involved with AI
Since artificial intelligence is going to reshape the entire world of work, it is even more important for us humans that employees build competencies to use AI iteratively.
Employees need new skills to be prepared for the growth of artificial intelligence. Leaders, therefore, have a responsibility to prepare their employees for the AI-enabled future.
Here’s how to act:
- Encourage the development of AI skills in your team.
- Consider how roles and functions will evolve along with AI and the potential it can create for your organization
Conclusion
AI offers opportunities for companies and especially for employees to make work easier by allowing certain tasks to be taken over by AI. Above all, it is a matter of becoming aware of the potential and dealing openly with AI. To be successful in the future depends above all on creativity and innovation. AI can spark new creativity and stimulate innovation by giving employees more time for these areas. However, it is important to treat AI responsibly.
As timeghost is also constantly looking for new ways to make work easier and more effective, we look forward to a new way of working and are excited to see what other potentials and possibilities AI will bring forth.
