When ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, PR agency founder Anurag Garg was eager for his team of 11 to quickly incorporate the technology in their workflow, so the business could keep up with its competitors. Mr Garg encouraged his employees to use the AI language tool for the agency’s long list of daily tasks, from coming up with story ideas for clients, pitches to offer the media, and transcribing meeting and interview notes.
But rather than increase the team’s productivity, it created stress and tension. Staff reported that tasks were in fact taking longer as they had to create a brief and prompts for ChatGPT, while also having to double check its output for inaccuracies, of which there were many. And every time the platform was updated, they had to learn its new features, which also took extra time.
“There were too many distractions. The team complained that their tasks were taking twice the amount of time because we were now expecting them to use AI tools,” says Mr Garg, who runs Everest PR and divides his time between the US and India.
The entire aim 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 burnt out.
Mr Garg backtracked on the mandate that the team should use AI in all 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 as we are not using too many AI tools. We’ve gone back to everything being done directly by the team, and they feel more connected and more involved in their work. It’s much better,” says Mr Garg.
The stress Mr Garg and his team experienced using AI tools at work is reflected in recent research. In freelancer platform Upwork’s survey of 2,500 knowledge workers in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, 96% of top executives say they expect the use of AI tools to increase their company’s overall productivity levels – with 81% acknowledging they’ve increased demands on workers over the past year.
Yet 77% of employees in the survey say AI tools have actually decreased their productivity and added to their workload. And 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 experiencing burnout – rising to 87% of people under 25, as revealed in a separate survey of 1,150 Americans, by CV writing company Resume Now.
A further study by work management platform Asana highlights the effect of introducing more work-based apps. In its survey of 9,615 knowledge workers across Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US, it found that, of those that use six to 15 different apps in the workplace, 15% say they miss messages and notifications because of the number of tools.
For those that use 16 or more, 23% say they are less efficient, and their attention span is reduced because of constantly having to switch apps.
The burnout lawyers are now experiencing, Ms Steele adds, is not only about the growing volume of work tech and AI tools are facilitating, but the knock on effects.
“You could feel stressed about having ended up in an environment of high volume and low control, when what you originally wanted to do was interact personally with clients and make a difference to them.”
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