UK workers spend a third of their day doing pointless tasks

Even though a typical workday lasts eight consecutive hours (one of which is ideally devoted to lunch), the typical worker is not productive during the entirety of that time.

According to one study, the average office worker is only productive for about three hours a day. However, newer data from Stanford University highlights that remote or hybrid workers are 13% more productive when working from home.

From a business perspective, if so many workers spend so little time being productive, shouldn’t we be focusing more on eliminating pointless tasks from the workday?

Not quite. Data from the Slack Workforce Index reveals that office workers spend 41% of their time on tasks that are “low-value, repetitive, or do not contribute significantly to their core job functions.”

The silver lining? The vast majority (81%) of those who have adopted AI tools to automate certain tasks report an increase in productivity.

These include writing assistance, workflow automation, and content summarization.

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Despite this, nearly half (42%) of respondents to the global study say their organizations have not issued any guidelines or guidance on the use of AI, which has a negative impact on the likelihood of adopting AI tools. Office workers in companies that have clear guidelines on AI are six times more likely to experiment with AI tools.

“The vast majority of people using AI and automation are already starting to see productivity gains,” says Christina Janzer, senior vice president of research and analytics at Slack and head of Slack’s Workforce Lab.

“However, data suggests that a lack of guidance or instruction around AI can prevent employees from trying it out. If you want to prepare your employees for the AI ​​revolution, you can start by providing guidance on how AI can be used in the workplace.”

This is confirmed by a recent GitHub study, which found that developers who started using Copilot tools were able to complete tasks 55% faster using AI support.

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Participants also reported an 88% improvement in perceived productivity, found coding less frustrating (59%), and were able to spend more time on more fulfilling parts of their job (74%).

Even more importantly, 96% of participants said they were faster at completing repetitive tasks, and 87% said Copilot made repetitive tasks less mentally demanding.

However, if your current employer is not interested in accelerating the implementation of AI in the workplace or does not have adequate guidelines in place, it does not mean you cannot take advantage of all the opportunities it offers.

The solution may be to change the approach to a company that values ​​innovation in the context of productivity.

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This article is part of a paid collaboration with Jobbio, a job board that aims to bring UKTN readers the most exciting technology jobs in the UK.