According to HP’s Work Relationship Index, only 27 percent of more than 15,000 respondents to the survey have a healthy relationship with their work. But not to worry, because AI is going to solve this. At least that is the expectation of knowledge workers and decision makers within organizations, according to the survey. What exactly we should imagine this to be, however, does not become immediately clear.
Our relationships are not doing well. The relationships with our work, that is. At least, that is the conclusion of a study that HP commissioned from no fewer than 16,624 respondents spread across twelve countries. Unfortunately, the Netherlands was not among them, but they did ask about the state of affairs in both growing and mature economies.
Less than a third have a good relationship with work
The key figure from the Work Relationship Index survey, which HP is making public today at the Amplify conference in Las Vegas, is that less than a third of respondents have a healthy relationship with their work. Growing economies score better than mature economies. Whereas India scores 50 percent and is the leader, all European, North American and Australian respondents do a lot “worse” with between 20 and 28 percent. Japan takes the crown, with only five percent of respondents having a healthy relationship.
The figures above also correlate with how well employees perform and how much they like staying with an organization. The less satisfied, the lower the productivity and greater the desire to leave. Employees report that they also experience an impact on their physical and mental health.
Also important to note here is that the expectations that knowledge workers have of their work have risen sharply since the corona pandemic. So one might wonder what the figures from this survey say at the end of the day about the state of work in general, other than that employees’ feelings have apparently become more important and stronger. It does fit the current sentiment we detect in society that feelings are considered to be more important than objectively measurable things. Whether that is a good thing, everyone must decide for themselves.
AI offers a solution, but how?
HP obviously has some kind of end goal with this Work Relationship Index. It should come as no surprise that this has something to do with AI. According to this survey, AI has the potential to bring some balance back into the working lives of knowledge workers. All respondents (knowledge workers, decision makers and business leaders) indicated that they expect a lot from this. It is interesting to note that the percentage in the first group is considerably lower than in the other two groups (54 versus 70 and 72 percent, respectively). This in itself is not surprising, as there is also a fear among knowledge workers that AI could actually make them unemployed.
Here again, we see that respondents in growing economies are more positive about their working life than those in mature economies. They see more opportunities and progress than the respondents from the West, perhaps partly because of the fact that they have more ground to make up in the first place.
Figures like the ones we see in this Work Relationship Index indicate that leaders within organizations have some work to do, particularly those in mature economies. They need to better educate their people about the opportunities that AI presents, while also allaying fears about it. Of course, advancing AI must als be a core objective of the organization as a whole, otherwise it will lead nowhere.
So what does this research really say?
In itself, there are some interesting insights in the research HP commissioned to base the Work Relationship Index on. However, we are left with the feeling that it’s hard to find ways to move forward. What are the applications of AI that make the relationship with work better, for example? We don’t find anything about that. And how can you make AI more interesting for organizations and among knowledge workers? We don’t get much insight into that either. Furthermore, the hugely increased expectations over the past three years, already mentioned, inflates the percentages as well. What are the reasons for this?
In the end, it is primarily a survey and Index that should boost awareness among companies around AI. If not from a production perspective, you at least have to do something with it to keep your employees happy. It is certainly good to be working on this within organizations, and perhaps the results of this research can help move it up the list of priorities. If so, the survey did achieve something, even if there is more to be gained from it as far as we are concerned. But that may be for another time.
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