Productivity Savings From Gen AI Don't Always Add Up

Forbes

24-04-2025

Business leaders need to think harder about the effects that Gen AI will have on different employees and about how to make the time saved from Gen AI be of value to both employees and the company.
getty
By Chris Koch, SAP Insights
The productivity savings from Gen AI will not free us all to, as the hyped-up platitude goes, 'focus on higher value-added tasks.'
Sure, GenAI is already saving us time. But assuming that as a result, employees will automatically spend that time valuably is simply wrong. Most companies don't have a bunch of higher value-added tasks just sitting around like boxes of candy on a shelf.
If they did, someone would already be doing them. The platitude is just a way to paper over the fact that figuring out what to do with incremental slices of time that Gen AI saves individual employees is not only complex but also may consume more time and resources than it's worth.
Business leaders need to think harder about the effects that Gen AI will have on different employees and about how to make the time saved from Gen AI be of value to both employees and the company.
In truth, the time that Gen AI saves individual employees, and the value that time saved contributes to companies, can vary considerably.
Consider call centers. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research observed over 5,000 agents who used a generative AI-based conversational assistant during text-based chats with customers. The assistant gave the agents information to share with customers and prompts to manage the tenor and range of the chats. With an AI bird on their shoulders, the agents resolved an average of 14% more issues per hour.
However, the AI assistants didn't help every agent equally. Each agent's productivity gains were linked to their experience and talent. The performance of novices and low-skilled agents improved by 34%, while the more experienced agents gained little or no improvement.
This makes sense when you consider that AI chatbots are only as good as the data they train on – in this case, the best practices of the most highly skilled agents. For the newbies, using AI was like having a really good cheat sheet. Meanwhile, AI obliterated the expertise that had helped the best agents not only rise to the top but also earn more money and recognition.
It's a sign of complications to come. What happens to the employees who trained Gen AI to become their equals? What higher value-added tasks will they get?
We know that overall, AI will increase overall company productivity. But the story can play out differently for individuals. Some employees will see gains, others a dead end. Here are some ways to think about the value GenAI can deliver to both companies and employees:
If employees only use Gen AI to help write e-mails or create a rough draft of a report, the time savings won't magically enable them to take that time and put it towards something more valuable than what they already do. If, on the other hand, Gen AI can decode a 30-page spreadsheet full of invoice entries, compare them to payments, and flag the inconsistencies, now you've saved some serious time. Talk with employees and find out where the big savings are.
A survey by Microsoft found that users of its Gen AI tool CoPilot saved employees an average of 14 minutes per day. But trying to figure out what to do with 14 minutes at the individual level is a time suck for everyone. Instead, package up all those minutes into a collective number and bigger goal, such as reducing the number of external contractors, or getting a lower price on an outsourcing contract.
If an employee says they want to learn something new, that may be the higher value-added task you've been looking for. And they'll be more motivated to retrain themselves if they can use the time they save with Gen AI each week.
Ignore the productivity mania, banish the platitudes, and focus on value.