A Harvard Business Review study is answering the question ‘what will employees do if AI saves them time at work?’ The answer: more work.
Researchers Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye with University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business studied a set of 40 workers at a 200-employee tech company from April to December last year to see whether generative AI had changed work habits in engineering, product, design, research, and operations.
"We found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so," the researchers wrote. "Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative, workers did more because AI made 'doing more' feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding."
Unfortunately the intensity of the work, the longer hours, and task expansion, led employees to feel stretched too thin, as the added work ate into their personal time.
"That workload creep can in turn lead to cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making,” the researchers satiated. “The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems."
During interviews with the employees, researchers found that using generative AI made it easier for employees to begin tasks that may have otherwise been daunting when starting from a blank page. Additionally, they were more willing to take on new responsibilities that had belonged to other roles thanks to a cognitive boost from AI.
But there were also engineering employees who found themselves checking the work of novice coders for errors, coaching vibe coders, and finishing projects that others had started.
Because it was easy to start tasks, the workers in the study began to work during breaks, at night and early in the morning, with fewer natural pauses in their workday.
"What looks like higher productivity in the short run can mask silent workload creep and growing cognitive strain as employees juggle multiple AI-enabled workflows," researchers said. "Because the extra effort is voluntary and often framed as enjoyable experimentation, it is easy for leaders to overlook how much additional load workers are carrying."
The fear is that this could impair judgement, increase the likelihood of errors, and mask unsustainable intensity as productivity gains.
"For workers, the cumulative effect is fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that work is harder to step away from, especially as organizational expectations for speed and responsiveness rise," the paper stated.
Employees have some cause to fear losing their jobs with Forrester’s most recent AI job replacement research estimates that the technology could uproot 6 percent of jobs by 2030, or about 10.4 million, through robotic process automation, business process automation, physical robotics, and generative AI.
However, whether that comes with added productivity is a separate argument. Forrester’s vice president and principal analyst J. P. Gownder recently told The Register he is unconvinced that AI will revolutionize productivity.
The Berkeley researchers suggested developing a set of standards to prevent burnout.
This includes "intentional pauses" to fight back against the blurred boundaries between roles, regulate the tempo of development, and make sure tasks that begin with one purpose don’t meander from the company’s goals.
"For example, a decision pause could require, before a major decision is finalized, one counterargument and one explicit link to organizational goals — widening the attention field just enough to protect against drift,” the researchers wrote. "Incorporating such pauses into everyday workflow is one way organizations can support better decisions, healthier boundaries, and more sustainable forms of productivity in AI-augmented environments."
They also advise organizations to work on projects in coherent phases and to move forward deliberately rather than at the pace that AI might allow them to move. Make the team lead the AI; don’t let the AI lead the team.
“By regulating the order and timing of work — rather than demanding continuous responsiveness — sequencing can help organizations preserve attention, reduce cognitive overload, and support more thoughtful decision-making in AI-forward workplaces,” they wrote.
Introducing more human interaction can also help prevent the depleting effects of AI-mediated work.
"As AI enables more solo, self-contained work, organizations can benefit from protecting time and space for listening and human connection. Short opportunities to connect with others—whether through brief check-ins, shared reflection moments, or structured dialogue—interrupt continuous solo engagement with AI tools and help restore perspective." ®
Source: The register