The productivity case for AI at work looks strong on the surface. Employees using AI tools report saving an average of 2.3 hours each day, according to new research from cloud communications and IT platform GoTo and Workplace Intelligence. More than 9 in 10 employees and IT leaders say their company should maintain or increase AI spending.
But look closer, and the picture gets more complicated.
Is AI productivity a wash?
Those same employees estimate they still spend 2.6 hours daily on tasks AI could already handle, a figure unchanged from the prior year. That gap suggests workers either don’t know how to apply AI tools to their specific roles or aren’t being given the direction to do so. The report also found that 69% of employees say they aren’t familiar with AI’s practical applications for their work, yet only 29% of IT leaders believe that’s true.
There’s a second drag on productivity that HR leaders may not have anticipated. As AI-generated work circulates through organizations, someone has to check it. More than half of employees say they are now responsible for reviewing AI outputs created by colleagues, with 50% doing this function every week. Among those reviewers, 79% say they regularly receive work that is low quality or contains errors, and 77% say reviewing it takes longer than reviewing work produced by a person.
The result that the time saved by one employee can become time spent by another cleaning up what was generated.
Read more | HR Tech Asia: Avoiding ‘work slop’, CHROs on accountability
HR tech in the news
At SAP Sapphire, the enterprise software giant unveiled its Autonomous Enterprise vision, anchoring AI agents in core business processes through a new unified platform. For HR leaders, that means more than 50 domain-specific AI assistants coming to human capital management workflows.
Payroll and HCM provider Paychex launched WISE, an agentic AI solution built on five decades of HR data that moves beyond passive assistance to complete workforce tasks autonomously, giving HR and operations teams embedded intelligence designed to guide decisions and execute processes.
Built to connect learning to business outcomes, Absorb’s new Aura platform uses specialized AI agents to tie employee development directly to the operational systems where companies measure performance, moving corporate training beyond content delivery into a results-driven function.
A Toronto office opening marks HiBob‘s latest push into the Canadian market, where the HR, payroll and finance platform sees growing demand from mid-sized companies navigating complex workforce needs as AI adoption makes people and business data harder to manage in silos.
More news and announcements
Global payroll platform Deel now lets employers offer workers stablecoin salary payouts alongside traditional pay through a single compliance layer. Live for U.S. and Eurozone customers, the feature requires no new vendor relationships and is free for employees who opt in.
For plan sponsors managing fiduciary obligations, Betterment at Work‘s redesigned 401(k) dashboard now includes an AI-powered benchmarking tool that compares participation and contribution rates against national averages, surfacing opportunities to improve employee retirement savings behavior.
Combining expert recruiters with AI agents that handle operational hiring work, new platform Contrario has reached $6 million in annualized revenue in under six months. It is in use at more than 200 fast-growing companies competing for talent in a crowded market.
Two leadership hires signal a growth push at EvoluteIQ, an enterprise automation company. The org named Paul Maguire as chief growth officer and Abhinaya S R as CHRO, as it expands across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific following a $53 million capital raise in September 2025.
Credit: Source link
