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- Four in five say AI makes them more productive, one in five say this benefits their employer
- Workers spend more time 'botsitting' than prompting AI in the first place
- Traditional metrics don't reveal just how many AI sessions fail
New research has claimed that while nine in 10 UK digital workers now use AI at work, putting British workers ahead of their US counterparts (84%), only 42% describe their workplace as AI-first - suggesting there are still some challenges along the way.
On a personal level, four in five (78%) admit AI makes them more productive, but only one in five (18%) believe this has any significant effect on overall organizational performance.
This is likely because, while the average worker saves around 12 hours per week through automation, half of that (6.3 hours) is being spend 'botsitting', the report from Glean notes.
The hidden tax behind AI productivity
Ultimately, while AI serves to boost the speed at which workers can work, it's not removing that work entirely. Instead, it's evolving roles into supervisory roles, with employees typically spending more time botsitting (38%) than asking AI to complete tasks (36%). "The hidden labour is becoming a quality-control problem," the company declared.
Glean argues "the cleanup bill is growing," with more than a third of AI sessions failing altogether and 77% of UK workers having to correct or re-do work in the past month, and 26% have done so in the past week.
"Too many companies are treating AI adoption like a vanity metric: more seats, more prompts, more usage," Head of the Work AI Institute Dr Rebecca Hinds noted, implying that productivity gains are largely overstated.
While IT teams face increasing pressure to deliver ROI, it's clear that metrics must take into account much more than total time saved. By reframing AI's actual impacts, companies will have greater visibility over error correct, prompt refinement and output validation to understand where it's actually delivering the best results.
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