AI has the potential to transform how we live and work, and its use in the workplace is gathering pace. According to Gallup, the number of US employees who say they have used AI in their role a few times a year or more has doubled since 2023, from 21% to 40%, with daily use doubling from 4% to 8% in the past 12 months alone.
But while AI can increase productivity and efficiency, its growing usage brings negative aspects to the workplace, too – notably in the rise of workslop. You may have been on the receiving end of it, or even be guilty of generating it yourself.
‘AI workslop is AI-generated work that looks good but lacks the substance to advance a task,’ explains Alex Liebscher, senior research scientist at BetterUp, a human transformation and digital coaching company. Workslop can often be found in documents, slides and emails, and tends to be overly long, hard to read or missing critical context.
‘Employees report spending nearly two hours addressing each instance of workslop’
Research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab has uncovered the true extent and impact of AI workslop. ‘Employees report spending nearly two hours addressing each instance of workslop – about 20 minutes more than if the sender hadn’t used AI to begin with,’ says Liebscher.
That amounts to an invisible cost of US$186 per employee per month, equating to more than US$9m a year in lost productivity for a 10,000-person company. Nearly 40% of US workers said they had received workslop in the past month.
Emotional impact
It’s not just productivity that can take a hit when workers turn to AI. Liebscher says workslop also adds ‘emotional strain’, triggering annoyance, frustration and confusion, and damaging team work and trust. ‘Workslop can erode confidence in a colleague’s abilities, reliability and attention to detail,’ he says. ‘Nearly a third of employees say workslop makes them less willing to collaborate with that person again, which has long-term implications for team cohesion and performance.’
When it comes to combating AI workslop, Liebscher advises leaders to focus on having clear and well-communicated guidelines. ‘Indiscriminate encouragement of AI use is one of the strongest predictors of professionals creating workslop,’ he says. AI use should be intentional, used to achieve goals rather than speed up or avoid work.
Leaders should understand that work environments that prize productivity above all else could lead to the temptation to produce workslop, and foster instead a culture where workers can ‘share, grow and ask for help’. ‘Leaders need to promote human-AI dynamics that support and strengthen collaboration,’ Leibscher adds.
And as to ensuring you are not part of the problem yourself? ‘The number-one thing professionals can do to avoid sharing workslop is carefully reviewing the output of AI models,’ says Liebscher. ‘Having a sceptical eye on model output will help ensure people learn when AI can be truly useful, and keep workslop at bay.’
