Will this contribute to employee burnout?

When ChatGPT came on the scene in late 2022, PR agency founder Anurag Garg was keen for his 11-person team to quickly integrate the technology into their workflow, so the company could keep up with its competitors.

Mr. Garg encouraged his employees to use the AI ​​language tool for a long list of daily agency tasks, from coming up with story ideas for clients, making presentations to the media, and taking notes for meetings and interviews.

But instead of increasing team productivity, it created stress and pressure.

Employees reported that the tasks were actually taking longer as they had to create a summary and prompts for ChatGPT, while they also had to double-check its results for inaccuracies, of which there were many.

Every time the platform was updated, they had to familiarize themselves with its new features, which also took additional time.

“There were a lot of distractions. The team complained that their tasks were taking twice as long because we were now expecting them to use AI tools,” says Garg, who runs Everest PR and splits his time between the US and India.

The whole point of introducing AI to the company was to simplify people’s workflows, but it was actually giving everyone more work to do, and making them feel stressed and overwhelmed.

As a business leader, Garg is also starting to feel overwhelmed by the increasing number of AI tools being released, and feels like he has to keep up with each new addition. Not only was he using ChatGPT as his team, he was using Zapier to track team tasks, and Perplexity to supplement customer research.

“There is a surplus of AI tools in the market, and no single tool solves multiple problems. As a result, I constantly needed to monitor multiple AI tools to perform tasks, which became more of a mess,” says Garg. “It was difficult to keep track of which tool “She was supposed to do what, and I started to feel completely frustrated.”

“The market is full of AI tools, so if you invest in a certain app today, there will be a better app available next week. There is a constant learning curve to staying relevant, which I was finding difficult to manage, which led to burnout.

Mr. Garg backed away from the mandate that the team should use AI in all of their work, and now they use it primarily for research purposes — and everyone is much happier.

It was a learning phase for us. The work is more manageable now because we are not using so many AI tools. We’re back to everything being done directly by the team, and they feel more connected and more engaged in their work. “It’s much better,” says Mr. Garg.

The stress that Garg and his team have been under when using AI tools at work is reflected in recent research.

In a survey of 2,500 knowledge workers in the US, UK, Australia and Canada by independent platform Upwork, 96% of senior executives said they expect the use of AI tools to increase their company’s overall productivity levels – with 81% admitting they have increased demand On human resources. workers during the past year.

However, 77% of employees surveyed say that AI tools have actually reduced their productivity and increased their workload. 47% of employees using AI in the survey say they have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employers expect.

As a result, 61% of people believe that using AI at work will increase their chances of burnout – rising to 87% of people under 25, as revealed in a separate survey of 1,150 Americans, conducted by resume writing company Resume Now.

The Resume Now survey also highlights that 43% of people feel that AI will negatively impact their work-life balance.

Whether the technology relies on AI or not, surveys indicate that many employees are already feeling burned out.

Another study by work management platform Asana highlights the impact of offering more work-based apps.

In a survey it conducted of 9,615 knowledge workers in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US, it found that among those who use six to 15 different apps in the workplace, 15% say they miss messages and notifications due to a number of tools.

For those who use 16 or more, 23% say they are less efficient, and their attention span is reduced due to constantly having to switch apps.

As Cassie Holmes, a professor of management at UCLA, commented in the study: “Using multiple apps requires additional time to learn and switch between them, and this lost time is painful because we are very sensitive to wasted time.”

Lawyer-turned-coach Leah Steele now specializes in helping legal professionals overcome burnout, with many coming to her feeling burdened by their companies’ increasing workload demands after the introduction of AI-based productivity tools. It’s an experience she’s familiar with, having introduced a new technology platform in a previous role that saw the number of clients rise from 50 to 250.

“The biggest thing I see is this constant competitive demand to do more with less — but companies aren’t really thinking about whether the systems and technology they’re providing are giving results that aren’t useful,” Bristol says. Based in Mrs. Steele.

“Everything moves so quickly. It is a constant battle to stay on top of things in order to develop expertise in such an evolving field.

Ms. Steele adds that the burnout lawyers are experiencing now is not just about the increasing volume of business technology and AI tools, but about the impact of the impacts.

“When we look at burnout, it’s not just about the amount of work we do, it’s about how we feel about the work and what we get out of it,” Ms. Steele says.

“You can feel stressed when you end up in a high-volume, low-control environment, when what you originally wanted to do was personally interact with customers and make a difference for them.”

“You may also feel stressed about the risk of losing your job, and fearful of being replaced because you no longer enjoy work as it has become so technology-driven,” Ms. Steele adds.

The Law Society of England and Wales recognizes that lawyers need better support from law firm leaders to make the most of new technology such as artificial intelligence.

“While AI and new technologies can make legal work more efficient by automating routine tasks, they can also create more work for lawyers, not less,” says President Richard Atkinson.

“It takes time to learn to use these tools, and lawyers often need to train and adapt their work processes. Many technologies were not originally designed for the legal sector, which can make the transition more difficult.”

Alicia Navarro is the founder and CEO of Flown, an online platform and community that helps people focus on “deep work” — tasks that require sustained focus. She agrees that there is an “avalanche” of AI tools, but says they must be used correctly.

“There is a tremendous amount of filtering and learning that has to happen before these tools can start to become productive elements of our lives.”

But she believes that for small businesses with limited resources, AI can be a big help.

“It’s incredibly empowering for startups to be able to do more, or for companies to be able to pay more revenue or pay their team more.”