Big tech says it can boost productivity, but AI won’t solve meetings madness
M eetings, more meetings. A Zoom call. A Google Hangout. Another meeting. Answering emails. Have you checked Slack? Did you sign off on those expenses in Concur? Ever feel too busy at work to get any actual work done? Well, apparently you are right. According to a new report from Microsoft, our workplaces have a serious productivity problem.
The study – which surveyed nearly 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets between 1 February 2023 and 14 March 2023 – found that 64% say they struggle with having the time and energy to do their job. Meetings overload is the biggest productivity killer. Respondents to the survey said that meetings are their “number one productivity disruptor” with more than two-thirds saying they likely wouldn’t even be missed if they weren’t there.
Other data supports Microsoft’s study. A recently released report from EY-Parthenon using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that American worker productivity plunged by 2.7% in the first quarter of 2023 compared with the same period last year, marking the fifth consecutive quarter that worker productivity has dropped.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft, with its enormous investment in AI tools like ChatGPT, says that AI is the solution. Never mind that it was Microsoft’s own technology – Teams, Office, Outlook – that promised productivity savings and delivered the opposite. Still, we’re to put our faith in the technocrats of Redmond to solve these problems with their new tools that will “radically rethink the workday” and “free up time and energy, protect focus time for the creative work that leads to innovation”.
Don’t believe it.
Microsoft’s AI push won’t do much to solve the productivity problem, given the company’s
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