‘You can choose fear or you can lean in and learn’, Microsoft’s WorkLab co-founder on AI and the future of work.
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00:00About five years ago when the world was flung into remote and hybrid work overnight, we began publishing something called the
00:06Work Trend Index, which we publish on WorkLab, and really studying all the patterns and the trends of how work is changing
00:13deeply so that we can help people understand and then meet them where they are with technology and products. So we just
00:20published, in fact, our 2024 Annual Work Trend Index. We surveyed 31,000 people in 31 countries, and 75 percent told us they're
00:29already using A.I. at work. And that usage has doubled in the past six months. And then interestingly, 78 percent of that
00:37usage is what we call B.Y.O.A.I. So they're bringing their own A.I. tools to work. And that's even a little bit higher in
00:44Europe where it's about 80 percent. You might wonder why is that happening. Our data shows that people are overwhelmed and
00:51under duress at work with the volume of things coming at them. And they're turning to A.I. for help and relief. Ninety percent say
00:59it helps them save time. Eighty five percent say it helps them be more productive. Eighty four percent helps them be more
01:05creative. And also people are telling us that helps them enjoy work more. But really where we find ourselves right now in this
01:11moment is how does a business leader take those individual time savings and turn them into business value. And that's kind of why
01:20we talk about this as sort of the hard part of where we are in this technology adoption cycle. Now comes the real work where
01:27people need to really build the habit of working in this new way with A.I. 71 percent of leaders told us that they would rather
01:36hire a less experienced candidate with A.I. skills than a more experienced candidate without. And 66 percent said they wouldn't
01:43hire someone without A.I. skills at all. So my message for sure is to for anyone sort of waiting on the sidelines it's time to jump
01:51into the pool or the ocean as it were and start experimenting. You know I really think this is a moment where you can sort of choose
01:59fear or you can choose to lean in and learn. I really think the tools that we use today will look so much different in five years. You
02:07know just take video conferencing in meetings. Right. We couldn't have imagined pre-pandemic that it would be as natural as it is
02:14today to hop on a video conference call to do business that way. When it comes to any technology disruption we tend to overestimate
02:22the short term and underestimate the long term. We really believe with A.I. that more new jobs will be created. We just can't see
02:29what all those jobs are. Right. Take a social media manager. Ten years ago. Right. It was hard to sort of vision. But what I can
02:36tell you is when we look at the data there's actually a little bit more of a nuanced story going on. The leaders we spoke to said
02:42they're actually a sort of a hidden talent shortage for key roles like cybersecurity experts
02:48engineering and creative folks actually. And on the flip side after sort of sitting out the last couple of years we see professionals
02:57are actually eyeing a career move. They told us that they're more likely to look at a career change or changing companies or quitting
03:04in the year ahead. And that's up from a couple of years ago. So it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out.