Survey finds AI productiveness a question for organizations

While GenAI is fast becoming an essential part of the workplace, not all organizations are prepared for how the technology will change things for their employees.

That’s what tech multinational Lenovo found in a new survey for its Work Reborn research series. Researchers spoke to 600 IT leaders, many of whom came from companies with over 1,000 employees.

Rakshit Ghura, Lenovo VP and GM of digital workplace solutions, told IT Brew that the report found that there’s a lot of work to be done to get GenAI to fit in the workplace.

“What we see are the opportunities which exist, for a large enterprise and the SMB customers, to focus on the future,” Ghura said, adding that this would lead to “the ultimate business outcome which that organization is expecting, by working in a structured manner and putting together a program.”

Challenges include an apparent disconnect between the C-suite and staff. According to the survey, 79% of IT leaders are optimistic about the potential of AI to assist workforce productivity. But GenAI adoption is held back by employee attitudes; 42% of employees are concerned that the technology will reduce their contributions, 35% report ethical concerns, 32% questioning the accuracy of the platforms, and other issues.

The way it works. Ghura believes it’s inevitable that GenAI will be adopted across the majority of organizations, making careful implementation important. “Organizations are going to embrace this kind of technology because it will help make their employees much more productive, and they can be much more engaging in their business role, and it can unleash the true productivity for an organization,” Ghura told IT Brew.

A supermajority of respondents—89%—said that for all the benefits of GenAI, to properly implement it in their organizations would take a digital transformation. This should be seen as an opportunity, according to Ghura.

“Everybody feels their current digital workplace, though they talk about GenAI, it does not meet the ultimate requirement of the employees—and they still feel as an IT leader, there is a potential to do more, and there is definitely more investment to be done to unleash the full potential of the GenAI use cases within the organization,” Ghura said.