AI (Artificial Intelligence), Best Workplaces, Productivity
Technology leaders will join Great Place To Work and Intuit for an exclusive executive conversation series on AI and the workplace.
Leaders’ questions about AI in the workplace look very different today than they did a year ago.
AI use is much more widespread. Six in 10 workers use AI for work at least weekly, per new data from the latest Great Place To Work®. Three in 10 (31%) use AI daily.
While 58% of respondents say that AI improves the quality of their work, overall adoption remains uneven and fragile. Just because individual work improves in quality doesn’t mean a company also experiences a measurable, durable increase in revenue or cost savings.
Companies are discovering that the challenge isn’t getting employees to use more AI at work. Instead, the biggest questions focus on how to get everyone using AI in ways that benefit the business, both now and in the future.
That’s what will be on the table for a group of chief technology leaders joining Great Place To Work for an exclusive executive conversation in partnership with Intuit. Representatives will include a wide range of industries, including finance, logistics, hospitality, manufacturing and more; all companies with a proven track record of building high-performance, high-trust workplaces.
The heart of the conversation: “How do we turn AI into something that builds a better workplace and a better business for everyone?”
“Because it’s early in the process of adopting AI for the general workforce, we’re dealing with some innately human problems,” says Atticus Tysen, SVP, product development and chief information security and fraud prevention officer at Intuit. “People who are technical by training are skilled at structured thinking, but to others, it’s a new way of thinking."
The ROI problem
Now that everyone is using AI, usage costs are ballooning. Even if AI models become cheaper to run, agents could use up to 30 times more tokens, keeping enterprise costs high.
That expense might be justified, but so far productivity gains aren’t showing up on the bottom line. Half of global CEOs say AI tools were the biggest driver of an increase in productivity for their organization last year. Yet, only 5% of CEOs can attribute at least 5% of their earnings before interest and tax to AI investments.
The meter is running, and the revenue isn’t showing up.
“Leaders at every company are feeling the pressure to speed up,” says Marcus Erb, EVP, data and insights at Great Place To Work, and the lead facilitator for the conversation. “The cost of AI means that companies must move quickly through this period of uncertainty while trying to balance unknown risks.”
Focusing on your people
Fundamentally, the challenges of the AI revolution are not technological. They are human.
That’s what Great Place To Work’s research has found again and again. “We've been studying and advocating and celebrating better ways of getting work done for 40 years,” Erb says. “This is just the next chapter in that story.”
Companies with the highest levels of trust in the workplace — the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® — have 8.5 times higher revenue per employee than the U.S. market average and outperform the stock market by a factor of three.
Leaders from these high-trust workplaces have something to offer on the topic of technology and empowering people.
“These leaders are deeply committed to the belief that your people are the reason your business will win,” Erb says. As technologists, they offer a promising opportunity to unlock what is missing from most efforts to reinvent business with AI.
“To take full advantage of using AI in the workplace, you have to step back to first principles about what your workflow is trying to accomplish,” Tysen says. “What is your output to the company, and then how do you achieve that output better and faster with AI at the core? You have to reimagine your entire workflow.”
Employees are telling their leaders that the AI transformation experience isn’t going well. Three in four employees have experienced at least one transformation event (reorganization, AI integration, layoffs, etc.) at work in the past 12 months, per Edelman. Four in 10 have experienced three or more transformation events.
When employees have poor experiences with that transformation, they report a 25-point decrease in trust in their manager and a 33-point decrease in trust in their CEO. And they are two times less likely to embrace AI transformation at work.
A new path forward
No one has the final answer on what will finally unlock the full potential of AI to build a better workplace.
What is certain: No one will find those answers if we don’t start asking different questions.
“AI is forcing us to rethink the entire experience of work,” Erb says. “How do you learn wisdom at work? How do you work together with this new technology? How do you lean into the things that make us more valuable as humans?”
The discussion promises an exhilarating opportunity for that rarest of experiences: discovering something radically new.
Interested in participating in future executive conversations with peers? Get in touch.
