Whose Time Is It Anyway?
A battle between leaders and employees is brewing over who owns the time AI is saving at work.
March 25, 2026
As one of the more proficient AI users on the team, Sarah completed all of her weekly projects ahead of schedule. She even got a jump on some of her tasks for next week. She didn’t think it would be a big deal if she asked to stay home on Friday, especially since her kids had the day off from school. Her boss had other ideas: Why not use the time to develop new skills, research competitors, or pitch in on a colleague’s project?
As AI adoption continues at an amazing pace, a battle between leaders and employees is brewing over who owns the time the technology is saving and how it should be spent. A study from the London School of Economics found that employees who use AI for tasks at work save an average of 7.5 hours per week—basically, one full day. Leaders, obviously, believe that this time belongs to the firm; after all, the promise of AI was to increase productivity and efficiency while allowing people to focus on more impactful and complex work.
But, as with nearly every aspect of business and work these days, it’s more complicated than that. Employees say AI is overworking them by loading them up with data, and argue that the time off might improve their productivity in the long run. In one survey, nearly half of workers said the saved time should be theirs.
That’s not likely to happen, says Brad Bell, director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “Outside of the most enlightened leaders, firms clearly view AI as a way to get more work done, not less,” he says. More work is coming employees’ way, he says, as evidenced by the enormous staff-cutting firms have been making recently, while still maintaining revenue growth. But with burnout at record highs and engagement at historical lows, experts worry that leaders are looking too myopically at AI’s efficiency gains for employees. Even if firms aren’t likely to let people take four-day workweeks or Fridays off, says Korn Ferry senior client partner Cheryl D’Cruz-Young, giving employees some of the AI-related time savings—rather than making them absorb more work—could be beneficial. “It is clear people want more flexibility, and freeing them up can actually increase productivity in the long run,” she says.
In the end, the issue may come down to how well companies can actually track the time AI has saved—which can be especially difficult with knowledge workers, says Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at The Wharton School. “It’s a lot of work to figure out how much time is really saved from any new practice,” he says. “Most firms are just guessing right now.” For her part, Shanda Mints, vice president of AI strategy and transformation at Korn Ferry, worries that the time AI saves employees will be wasted in the absence of a clear strategy. “Any extra time employees have is usually taken up by putting out whatever fires or emergency comes their way,” she says.
Photo credits: Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
