Employees really are too damn busy

Why AI is leaving many employees more overworked and less productive

IN 1987, NOBEL laureate economist Robert Solow famously quipped that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

Click here to view this article in the London Inc. Worklife newsletter

While work was, at the time, undergoing an upheaval that might compare with what we’re seeing today, it was hard to tell whether it was making people more productive, or just giving them another thing to manage.

And we’re seeing an echo of that today. A new report from Korn Ferry suggests that while businesses feel they have the tools and workflows to supercharge productivity, it has been slow to materialize in any measurable way, because workers are being kept too busy.

 

“Organizations are pushing harder than ever. More tools. More work. More pressure,” the Workforce 2026 survey titled Growing Nowhere begins. “The harder they push, the less they’re getting back. Right now, there’s a serious disconnect between boardroom strategies and the people tasked with delivering them.”

Drawn from a survey of over 16,000 workers, Korn Ferry’s statistics indicate that 62 per cent say the introduction of AI into their workplace has corresponded with a workload that has “increased significantly” over the past two years, even though 63 per cent say the tools increase their efficiency on a particular task.

Forty-five per cent now say they are too busy to deliver meaningful results, while 64 per cent said their organization seems to focus more on how quickly work is done than how much value it adds. This, they suggest, is a problem for global growth rates.

“Activity is not the same as value,” stated Roger Philby from Korn Ferry. “Organizations are great at measuring activities but find it much harder to connect the dots to value.”

Story Continues Below

Elsewhere in the report, he notes that “efficiency tells you what to cut. It doesn’t tell you what to build, and the best organizations understand the value of both.”

The report suggests that firms have, en masse, confused efficiency for productivity — and this is part of why many firms that have leaned hard on cutting-edge AI tools are still failing to see tangible returns. “Roles are disappearing — cut, restructured, replaced by AI,” the report noted.

While the ability to complete more tasks with fewer people with AI is plausible, Korn Ferry’s report suggests that while the work is getting done, value isn’t being generated.

“Can we sustain people feeling like they’re permanently working two jobs? Will you keep your highest performers? Will you see the quality of work that sets a company apart?” asks Korn Ferry’s Jenna Young. “Not for long.” Kieran Delamont