Employees seek more guidance over use of AI in workplace

Only a quarter of companies provide policies or guidance on the use of AI at work, a lack of direction causing confusion among employees, according to new research in the US and UK.

A report released today underlined how AI’s uses in the workplace were expanding rapidly and how workers were increasingly turning to AI to streamline tasks.

The State of AI at Work report by US-based HR tech firm Asana, found 30% of employees currently used AI for data analysis and 25% for administrative functions, and that 62% and 57% of employees, respectively, were eager to use AI for these tasks. In the US, 45% of employees said they were keen to use AI for brainstorming, compared with 32% in the UK.

The authors reported that only 24% of companies provided policies or guidance on AI usage at work. This led to 26% of employees being unsure whether they should use it with many saying they feared being perceived as lazy if they used the technology. A large minority (20%) even said they would feel like a fraud if they used the technology.

At the same time there was a growing call for AI tools to be more accessible at work, with most employees (60%) wanting to to democratise AI within their organisations so that it is accessible to all employees.

A minority of employees, found the researchers, were open to AI assessing their performance at work. In the US, 38% of employees were receptive to this, compared with 28% in the UK.

When it came to training, the US was ahead of the UK, with 23% of companies offering training, as opposed to 13%.

Almost half (48%) of employees wanted more guidance from their employers on how to use AI.

Saket Srivastava, chief information officer at Asana, said it was not right for employees to navigate the shift to using AI on their own. He said: “Employees need clear guidelines to understand AI’s role in their functions, along with tailored training and accessible technologies to fully harness AI’s capabilities. Organisations that get this right will leverage AI in a way that unlocks new levels of human ingenuity.”

A separate report, by UK firm Capterra, a tech subsidiary of Gartner, has found that 68% of employees favoured strict guidelines to ensure the correct usage of AI tools.

Capterra UK content analyst, Eduardo Garcia Rodriguez, said: “It is crucial to strike a balance between harnessing the potential of AI and implementing effective regulations to ensure ethical and responsible usage.”

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