New research* reveals that almost a quarter of the UK workforce are spending half of their working day (3-4 hours) on non-productive, manual tasks that could easily be automated.
The research, conducted with 1,000 white collar office workers across the UK from small-, mid- and large-sized companies, found that three quarters of workers (77%) say access to the right technology and wanting to do challenging and stimulating work (71%) are most crucial to their job fulfilment, but organisations aren’t delivering.
Workers surveyed in the Employee Experience Benchmark Report 2023 report from Kore.ai, say workplace technology is more of a hindrance than a help, with at least one in three (31%) of employees rating the tools they use on a day-to-day basis as ‘average’ or ‘bad’ in terms of ease-of-use, streamlining and simplifying their workload. This rises to 52% for finance and 47% for HR tools, and by on average 10% for all tools among 18–24-year-olds, with the future of the workforce clearly unhappy with the tech they’re having to use.
Workers are held back by labour-intensive ‘microtasks’ that they want off their to-do lists and put in the hands of automation. This includes:
- Finding information or documents – 50%
- Raising invoices or purchase orders – 49%
- Raising an IT ticket or getting status updates – 48%
- Basic HR requests (e.g., holiday or pay questions) – 44%
“From the survey, it’s clear that employees are crying out for advanced AI-powered experiences to be empowered to get tasks done quickly, efficiently and accurately,” comments Kore.ai CEO and Founder Raj Koneru. “Of the use cases we’ve implemented for our enterprise clients, about 42% of those focus on employee experiences and companies have seen average 30% productivity gain and higher satisfaction with AI enabled IVAs assisting employees in day-to-day tasks.”
As the technology evolves, generative AI applied in combination with conversational AI across various enterprise use cases in a responsible and safe manner is expected to transform workplaces and streamline workflows so employees have more time to be productive and creative. By 2030, generative AI combined with AI-powered tools can automate 30 percent of hours worked today, predicts a study from McKinsey Global Institute.
*Kore.ai
