Survey Finds 40% of US Non-Managers See No Time Saved by AI, While 92% of Executives Report Increased Productivity

mrpatto · 2026-04-14T20:22:21.581Z

a recent survey (https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/ceos-say-ai-is-making-work-more-efficient-employees-tell-a-different-story-6613ce9d) of 5,000 white-collar US workers found that 40% of non-managers say AI saves them no time at all at work, while 92% of high-level executives say it makes them more productive.

Survey Finds 40% of US Non-Managers See No Time Saved by AI, While 92% of Executives Report Increased Productivity | ElevateCX

6 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Nicholas Chlumecky
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One thing I've been wondering is if AI more directly translates to the work C-suite people are doing as opposed to what regular workers are assigned, and if that's creating a perception gap. "This worked great for summarizing these articles and helping remind me who to email!" vs "I'm required to add AI to my support vertical without an understanding of why we would use it and it keeps giving wrong answers to our customers"
Nicholas Chlumecky
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Workers in the Section survey were far more likely to say they were anxious or overwhelmed about AI than excited—the reverse was true for the C-suite—and 40% of all respondents said they would be fine never using AI again. The most common way most people said they used AI tools was for basics like google-search replacements or generating drafts. Far fewer used it for more-complex tasks like data analysis or code generation.
mrpatto
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I think for sure there's some of that going on - the nature of the tool means you can have so many different experiences
Neal
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(edited)·
Just thinking of some of my own observations, this is definitely something that I see, considering my own work versus my team’s work, where they need to individually respond to tickets and write drafts. They use AI drafts for actual troubleshooting and drafting, but sometimes it is a lot faster just to be able to write the email yourself and send it than it is to go through the editing of AI and stuff like that. For myself, I see a lot of time savings because I need to make a lot of slides and a lot of presentations and do a lot of investigating and things like that. It really helps just kind of gather and consolidate all of that information. For example, we just had our team day where our entire department came together, and I didn’t really have much time at all. I used Claude co-work to dump all of my thoughts, what I wanted to do, to make sure that everything went right, and it made the presentation and the deck for me. It saved me a ton of time on actually getting everything set up. That goes across the board for a lot of the slide decks that I need to make when it comes to either new proposals or things like that. The nature of the work really depends on it I think.
Ines
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If we're talking purely from a Support perspective: the thing that bears the biggest cognitive load for workers is the relational and emotional aspect, which happens to be something that you can't easily automate. Since a lot of the 'easy' tickets get automated away already, the workers get 'stuck' with the tough(er) cases. And for that same reason, it's difficult or even obstructive to use AI in a way that showcases them as being good at their jobs. If they could use AI to resolve those issues, it wouldn't have landed on their plate 🙂
Ines
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In an environment where AI slurps up what can be resolved through process + information, 'good at your job' becomes 'proficient in relational management'. If you're expected to then also rely on AI that feeds you workslop, it adds another layer of cognitive work to determine whether what you're doing/getting recommended/whatever aligns with that definition of 'good at your job'.

Nicholas Chlumecky
·
·
One thing I've been wondering is if AI more directly translates to the work C-suite people are doing as opposed to what regular workers are assigned, and if that's creating a perception gap. "This worked great for summarizing these articles and helping remind me who to email!" vs "I'm required to add AI to my support vertical without an understanding of why we would use it and it keeps giving wrong answers to our customers"
Nicholas Chlumecky
·
·
Workers in the Section survey were far more likely to say they were anxious or overwhelmed about AI than excited—the reverse was true for the C-suite—and 40% of all respondents said they would be fine never using AI again. The most common way most people said they used AI tools was for basics like google-search replacements or generating drafts. Far fewer used it for more-complex tasks like data analysis or code generation.
mrpatto
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·
I think for sure there's some of that going on - the nature of the tool means you can have so many different experiences
Neal
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(edited)·
Just thinking of some of my own observations, this is definitely something that I see, considering my own work versus my team’s work, where they need to individually respond to tickets and write drafts. They use AI drafts for actual troubleshooting and drafting, but sometimes it is a lot faster just to be able to write the email yourself and send it than it is to go through the editing of AI and stuff like that. For myself, I see a lot of time savings because I need to make a lot of slides and a lot of presentations and do a lot of investigating and things like that. It really helps just kind of gather and consolidate all of that information. For example, we just had our team day where our entire department came together, and I didn’t really have much time at all. I used Claude co-work to dump all of my thoughts, what I wanted to do, to make sure that everything went right, and it made the presentation and the deck for me. It saved me a ton of time on actually getting everything set up. That goes across the board for a lot of the slide decks that I need to make when it comes to either new proposals or things like that. The nature of the work really depends on it I think.
Ines
·
·
If we're talking purely from a Support perspective: the thing that bears the biggest cognitive load for workers is the relational and emotional aspect, which happens to be something that you can't easily automate. Since a lot of the 'easy' tickets get automated away already, the workers get 'stuck' with the tough(er) cases. And for that same reason, it's difficult or even obstructive to use AI in a way that showcases them as being good at their jobs. If they could use AI to resolve those issues, it wouldn't have landed on their plate 🙂
Ines
·
·
In an environment where AI slurps up what can be resolved through process + information, 'good at your job' becomes 'proficient in relational management'. If you're expected to then also rely on AI that feeds you workslop, it adds another layer of cognitive work to determine whether what you're doing/getting recommended/whatever aligns with that definition of 'good at your job'.