Although the typical work day spans eight consecutive hours (one of which should ideally be spent having lunch), the typical worker isn’t productive for the entire amount of time.
According to one study, the average office worker is only productive for around three hours per day. However, more recent data from Stanford University highlights that those who work remotely or hybrid tend to be 13% more productive when working from home.
From a business perspective, if so many workers are spending so little time being productive, surely there needs to be more consideration given to eradicating meaningless tasks from the workday?
Not quite. Data from the Slack Workforce Index reveals that office workers are spending 41% of their time on tasks that are “low value, repetitive or lack meaningful contribution to their core job functions.”
The silver lining? The vast majority (81%) of those who have adopted AI tools to automate certain tasks report an increase in productivity.
These include writing assistance, automating workflows, and summarising content.
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Despite this, nearly half (42%) of the respondents who took part in the global survey say that their organisations haven’t issued any guidelines or guidance around AI use and this has a knock-on effect on the likelihood of adopting AI tools. Desk workers at companies that have clear AI guidelines and six times more likely to have experimented with AI tools.
“The vast majority of people who are using AI and automation are already starting to experience productivity gains,” says Christina Janzer, senior vice president of research and analytics at Slack and head of Slack’s Workforce Lab.
“But the data indicates that failing to provide guidance or instruction on AI may be inhibiting your employees from giving it a try. If you’re looking to ready your workforce for the AI revolution, you can start by providing guidelines for how AI can be used at work.”
This correlates with a recent study from GitHub which identified that developers who started using its Copilot tools were able to complete tasks 55% faster when assisted by AI.
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They also succeeded in improving perceived productivity by 88%, found coding to be less frustrating (59%), and were able to focus more time on more rewarding elements of the job (74%).
Even more significantly, 96% reported being faster when it came to repetitive tasks, and 87% said that Copilot made repetitive tasks less mentally taxing.
However, if your current employer isn’t interested in accelerating AI adoption in the workplace or doesn’t have guidelines in place, that doesn’t mean you can’t avail of all the opportunities it affords.
Pivoting to a company that values innovation when it comes to productivity could be the solution.
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