Who Gets the Time AI Saves?
Best-selling author Dan Goleman argues that that the answer to the question reflects what a leader considers “time well spent.”
Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry.
One of the great promises of AI is that it will give us time back. In the ideal version, a report that took six hours takes twenty minutes, meeting notes go out automatically once the Zoom room closes, and an agent handles our reservations and appointments.
There is evidence that the pitch holds up. In a Census Bureau survey, 31% of workers who had used AI in the previous week estimated it saved them one to two hours, and another 15% reported savings of more than four hours. But these are workers' own estimates. What they don't tell us is how the time got used, or whether workdays have gotten any shorter or less stressful.
This raises a question: What is the time AI saves actually for? More room for life outside work and for critical or innovative thinking? Or more room for urgent tasks handed down from above?
For many AI users, some of the time saved goes right back into managing the technology. A Harris Poll commissioned by Collibra revealed that 51% of technology decisionmakers said their teams spent substantial staff hours reviewing and correcting AI agent outputs. In organizations with at least $100 million in revenue this jumped to 64%. As far as we can tell, a faster first draft does not necessarily mean a faster finished product.
But even when AI does deliver, we still have to decide what to do with the time that opens.
Consider a manager who saves an hour using AI to prepare for a meeting. In one reality, they could check in with an employee going through a hard time, take a walk to think through a complex decision, or have lunch with friends or family. In another, the hour could go straight into another meeting, or into asking AI for more versions of a presentation that already does what it needs to.
Each choice reflects a set of values about what makes time well spent.
For those accustomed to judging a "good day" by how much gets accomplished, an opening in the calendar can actually feel deeply unsettling. The appreciation of having more time gives way to panic about needing to fill it. After all, in most organizations, there is always another task to complete or another improvement to make. For many workers, the to-do list is endless.
Emotional intelligence gives us a way to examine our own impulses. The more self-aware we are, the better we are at recognizing what is driving us. Are we motivated by passion or by pressure? Are we curious and engaged, or anxious about falling behind? Are we ready to step back and see the big picture, or uneasy about stopping because we are still looking for reassurance that we have contributed enough?
Once we are aware of our impulses, we can cultivate self-management to make choices about how we respond. Sometimes that means harnessing our stress to persist through a difficult assignment. Other times it means acknowledging we are at our edge and taking a walk to clear the slate and direct our attention elsewhere.
A Tibetan model of wealth offers a broader way to think about what our efforts accumulate. In fact, this is one of the models emotional intelligence was inspired by. Alongside material success and prestige, it recognizes inner qualities such as contentment and presence, and the development of wisdom and kindness. These forms of wealth can and need to coexist, even though they ask different things of our time.
Applied to organizational life, this model changes the questions we ask about how we spend our hours. Leaders continually face pressure to meet immediate goals while investing in work whose value takes longer to become visible. If a company says developing its people matters, some of the time AI saves could go toward mentoring. If its purpose centers on serving customers, employees could use that time to understand a problem a satisfaction survey has failed to capture.
Harvard research on the connection between purpose and profit offers a reason to take these questions seriously. Drawing on roughly 500,000 employee survey responses, the researchers found that companies combining a strong sense of purpose with clear direction from management had better subsequent accounting and stock market performance. Purpose alone did not show that relationship. Meaning, it seems, needs to come with clarity about where the organization is headed and how people are expected to spend their time.
For leaders adopting AI, how they allocate saved time becomes a practical test of priorities. An extra hour can help meet today's production target, or it can give a manager time to develop someone who will be ready for greater responsibility a year from now.
Employees, of course, don't always get to make these choices. A leader who fills every opening with more work has already decided for the team. If leaders want people to reflect or tend to relationships, they have to make room for that in the workload.
Before filling the saved time, leaders could ask their teams what they haven't been able to give enough attention to. Which conversations keep getting postponed? Where would an hour of uninterrupted thought make a difference?
The answers can help them decide what the time AI saves is actually for.
These conversations might also make employees more willing to adopt the technology. Because who wants to carve out more time just to do more of the same?
Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon
Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence.
