Will this contribute to employee burnout?

When ChatGPT came onto the scene in late 2022, PR agency founder Anurag Garg was keen for his 11-member team to quickly incorporate the technology into their workflow so that the business could keep up with the competition.

Mr. Garg encouraged his staff to use the artificial language tool to perform a long list of day-to-day agency tasks, from coming up with story ideas for clients, presentations to the media and transcribing recordings of meetings and interviews.

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

Employees reported that tasks actually took longer because they had to create a short description and tooltips for ChatGPT, as well as 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 additional time.

“There were too many distractions. The team complained that their tasks were taking twice as long because we now expected them to use artificial intelligence tools,” says Mr Garg, who handles public relations for Everest and splits his time between the US and India.

The whole purpose of introducing AI into a company was to make people’s workflows easier, but in reality it was giving everyone more work and causing them to feel stressed and burned out.”

As a business leader, Mr. Garg also began to feel overwhelmed by the growing number of AI tools being launched and felt that he needed to keep up with each new addition. He, like his team, used not only ChatGPT, but also Zapier to track team tasks and Perplexity to complement customer research.

“There are many AI tools on the market, and no single tool solves multiple problems. As a result, I constantly had to keep track of multiple AI tools to complete tasks, which became increasingly confusing. It was difficult to keep track of which tool was supposed to do what, and I started getting very frustrated,” says Mr. Garg.

“The market is flooded with artificial intelligence tools, so if I invest in a particular application today, a better application will appear next week. To stay relevant, you need to constantly learn, but I found it difficult to cope with this, which led to burnout.”

Mr. Garg dropped the requirement that the team use AI in all their work, and they now use it primarily for research purposes—and everyone is much happier.

“It was a learning curve for us. Now the work has become more manageable because we are not using too many artificial intelligence tools. We’ve gone back to having everything done directly by the team and they feel more connected and more involved in their work. This is much better,” says Mr. Garg.

The stress that Mr. Garg and his team experienced while using artificial intelligence tools at work is reflected in recent studies.

In a survey of 2,500 knowledge workers in the US, UK, Australia and Canada conducted by freelance platform Upwork, 96% of executives said they expect the use of artificial intelligence tools to improve their company’s overall productivity levels, with 81% admitting that they Demands on employees have increased over the past year.

However, 77% of employees who responded to the survey say that AI tools have actually reduced their productivity and increased 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 artificial intelligence at work will increase their chances of experiencing burnout. That figure rises to 87% among people under age 25, according to a separate survey of 1,150 Americans by resume writing company Resume Now.

The Resume Now survey also shows that 43% of people believe AI will negatively impact work-life balance.

Regardless of whether the technology is based on artificial intelligence or not, surveys show that many workers already feel overwhelmed.

Further research from work management platform Asana highlights the impact of introducing more work-centric apps.

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

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

As Cassie Holmes, professor of management at UCLA, commented on the study, “Using multiple apps requires extra time learning and switching between them, and that wasted time is painful because we are very sensitive to wasted time. »

Lawyer-turned-trainer Leah Steele now specializes in helping lawyers overcome burnout, and many come to her feeling burdened by the increased demands on their companies’ workloads after implementing AI-powered productivity tools. It’s an experience she’s familiar with after implementing a new technology platform in her previous role saw her number of clients grow from 50 to 250.

“The biggest thing I see is that there is a constant, competing pressure to do more with less, but companies don’t really think about whether the systems and technologies they put in place are delivering unhelpful results,” says Bristol. based on Ms. Steele.

“Everything is moving so fast. It is a constant struggle to stay current and develop expertise in such a cutting-edge field.”

The burnout that lawyers are now experiencing, Ms. Steele adds, is not only due to the increasing volume of work facilitated by technology and artificial intelligence tools, but also due to the consequences.

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

“You may feel stressed because you find yourself in a high-volume, low-control environment when you originally wanted to personally interact with clients and make a difference in their lives.”

Ms Steele adds: “You may also be stressed by the risk of losing your job and the fear of being replaced because you no longer enjoy your job as it has become so technology-focused.”

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

“While artificial intelligence 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.

“Learning to use these tools takes time, and lawyers often have to undergo training and adapt their workflows. Many technologies were not originally designed for the legal sector, which can make the transition 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 need to be used correctly.

“There is a huge amount of filtering and learning that needs to happen before these tools can become productive elements in our lives.”

But she argues that for smaller firms with limited resources, AI can be a big help.

“It’s incredibly inspiring for startups to be able to do so much more, and for companies to be able to pay out more dividends or pay their team more.”