In a recent episode of The Age of AI, our series covering the rapid evolution of the AI landscape, exploring what’s now, what’s next, and how that impacts the world of business, the workplace, individuals, and the world, we explored the thorny topic of workplace productivity, why it’s at a breaking point, and how AI can help. Host Shelly Kramer, principal analyst at Kramer&Co. is joined by Stefanie Tignor, Head of Product Data Science and Engineering at Grammarly to discuss key findings from the Grammarly Harris Poll annual report on AI’s impact in the workplace. Their discussion revealed critical insights about productivity challenges and how AI solutions might address them.
Grammarly Harris Poll Workplace Productivity Study Results: Productivity is at a Breaking Point, Exploring How AI Can Help (watch the full episode here):
The Productivity Paradox
The survey of 1,000 business professionals uncovered a troubling reality: workplace productivity has reached a critical breaking point. Communication inflation is a very real thing, and today, workers are communicating across more channels than ever before. In addition, the expectation to always be connected is not only incredibly stressful but also makes focusing on the work at hand a challenge.
A staggering 88% of respondents admitted to spending time on low-value tasks, with workers losing a full workday (8.5 hours) weekly on activities that don’t deliver meaningful results. This “communication inflation” stifles productivity and growth in significant ways and results in what Tignor refers to as “performative productivity.”
Performative productivity is all of those things: busy work without impact that manifests as unnecessary check-ins, redundant status updates, and fragmented communications across multiple channels. Despite increasing activity levels, organizations aren’t seeing corresponding business outcomes, and employees report feeling overwhelmed by the expectation to be “always connected.”
Grammarly estimates that communication challenges and poor communication have a significant bottom line impact. It’s estimated that businesses lose approximately $9,284 per employee annually due to poor communication, which equates to an annual loss of $9.3 million for a 1,000 person company.
AI as a Potential Solution
The research presents a compelling case for AI adoption: tools can save workers up to 25.2 hours per week. More importantly, 96% of workers who embrace AI report higher work satisfaction compared to 81% of their non-AI-using counterparts. The Grammarly Harris Poll Study showed that business leaders who use gen AI tools save an average of 10.7 hours per week, which is a 13% increase YoY, and knowledge workers save over 8 hours weekly.
This suggests AI not only increases efficiency but also improves workplace experiences by eliminating meaningless tasks. It also leads to improved communication with customers, an increase in workplace satisfaction, and better business outcomes. The challenge, as we discussed, is the gaps in A I literacy that are prevalent in just about every organization. Take a look at the graph below from the report —
The Familiarity vs. Fluency Gap
While AI familiarity among professionals has grown 24% year-over-year, AI fluency has increased by only 4%. Currently, just 13% of professionals identify as AI-fluent, while 22% consider themselves AI-avoidant. This widening gap presents significant challenges for organizations seeking ROI from their AI investments. Take a look at the big difference between AI fluency in business leaders compared to knowledge workers and you’ll see where there’s room for improvement.
Tignor suggested that many workers view AI as “just another thing” to learn rather than a helpful aid. To me, this is one of those situations where you don’t know what you don’t know — until you know. Once employees have the exposure to and the opportunity to start embracing and using AI, it’s easy to see how beneficial it can be from a productivity standpoint. Here’s a glimpse from the report on the time-savings AI can drive for a wide range of workers —
Stefanie and I agree about the importance of regular education and ongoing training to help employees bridge this gap and become familiar with the benefits AI can deliver. It is critical that enterprises focus on educational components and fluency training to bridge this gap, especially among knowledge workers, and also address the concerns expressed by survey respondents about over-reliance (39%), ethics/bias (28%), and data security (28%), so that they can feel comfortable forging ahead.
Surprising Generational Adoption Patterns
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was seeing the Grammarly Harris Poll results on generational adoption patterns for AI. Contrary to expectations, Gen Z represents the smallest share of AI power users at 16%, compared to Gen X at 29% and Millennials at 55%. This challenges assumptions about digital natives automatically embracing new technologies in the workplace.
Stefanie and I discussed the fact that experienced workers (e.g. your Gen X and Millennial cohorts) are more confident and accustomed to looking for efficiencies. As a result, they might better identify low-value tasks suitable for automation, than their significant younger, less experienced counterparts, having performed them for years. This presents an opportunity for organizations to provide targeted training across all generations.
Benefits for Diverse Workforces
The study revealed that multilingual workers are 18% more likely to struggle with notification overload, but 93% say AI makes work less overwhelming. Similarly, 92% of neurodiverse professionals report that AI reduces workplace stress, highlighting AI’s potential to create more inclusive work environments.
Interestingly, 53% of AI power users work in fully in-office environments, while remote workers constitute only 10% — a significant gap that represents a missed opportunity, as remote employees rely heavily on written communication.
The Future: Agentic AI and Human-Centric Work
Looking ahead, 88% of respondents indicated they would delegate tasks to AI to handle autonomously if possible. However, Stefanie emphasized that the key to broader adoption lies in developing clearer use cases and more human-centric approaches to AI.
We both agreed that the future of workplace AI should focus on making jobs more joyful by automating tedious tasks while enhancing human connections. As Stefanie concluded, “There’s just so much opportunity here to automate and get away with the things about work that really grate us and make us feel burned out…and an opportunity to bring more human aspects into the workplace.”
Achieving real productivity with AI doesn’t have to be complicated. Empowering the people who understand the power of AI and are comfortable using it to help teach others and shift their less confident colleagues’ mindsets from apprehension to excitement and empowerment is a good starting place. Making sure your teams understand that AI is an assistant, and a powerful one, not a replacement for humans, is also key.
Addressing things like AI avoidance and working to close those literacy gaps with regular education and training are important, as is moving away from that performative productivity to work that is meaningful, enjoyable, and which can deliver significant bottom line benefits, to the user and to the organization as a whole.
The report is packed with tons of great information and I encourage you to download and read it. Find the Grammarly | The Harris Poll’s 4th annual The Productivity Shift report here.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
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