#ai-in-workplace

#ai-in-workplace

That cycle is breaking down. Not through top-down mandates, but because of AI. New research shows that the workweek is changing for AI-enabled teams in measurable and sustainable ways. Employees are executing high-value work on Mondays and Fridays, meetings are consolidating towards the middle of the week, and engagement levels are climbing. The implications reach far beyond scheduling: AI is beginning to influence pacing, workflows, and even how leaders think about organizational design.

Since AI entered the workplace, managers expect teams to produce more work in less time. They see tasks completed in two hours instead of two weeks, without understanding the process behind it. Yet, AI still makes too many mistakes for high-quality output, forcing workers to adjust, edit, and review everything it produces-creating "workflation," which adds more work to already overloaded plates. AI has accelerated expectations because managers know that teams using it can work faster, but quality work still requires time, focus, and expertise.

His reward for going along with those demands, after being a faithful servant for 17 years at the edutech company? Getting replaced by a large language model, along with a couple dozen of his coworkers. That's, of course, after his boss reassured him that he wouldn't be replaced with AI. Deepening the bitter irony, Cantera - a researcher and historian - had actually grown pretty fond of the AI help, telling WaPo that it "was an incredible tool for me as a writer."

It's been less than three years since ChatGPT lit the fuse of the current explosion of AI everywhere. AI years move even faster than Internet years, so there's been time not only for the forcible injection of AI into the workplace courtesy of Microsoft, but the first scientific studies of the effect. Productivity may not have gone up, but anxiety, confusion and annoyance most certainly have.

We are living through an AI revolution. Boards are green-lighting pilots and buying AI licenses to maximize employee productivity. However, the most powerful performance lever in the modern workplace isn't algorithmic, it's human. When people are happier at work, they create, collaborate, and stay. When they aren't, the best tech in the world won't stop the value from leaking out of your organization.

In an era where generative AI and autonomous agents are rapidly redefining how work gets done, hesitation is the new risk.

I think we should let the French go to a two-day work week and then kick their ass internationally. There's no such thing as a work week anymore anyways on a digital economy.