90% Say AI Saves Them Time. So Why Aren’t More Teams Using It?

Last week, I was driving to a client meeting in an unfamiliar part of town. Ten years ago, I would have spent 20 minutes before leaving, printing directions, highlighting the route, and probably still getting lost halfway there.

Now I just tap my phone. GPS handles the navigation so I can focus on preparing for the meeting, thinking through my talking points, or just enjoying the drive without stress.

The GPS revolution didn't eliminate drivers, just the frustration of being lost. The same thing is happening with AI in the workplace, but everyone's focused on robot takeovers instead.

AI isn't the villain in this story

More than half of what we call "work" isn't actually work at all. It's coordination. It's email ping-pong. It's updating spreadsheets that update other spreadsheets. It's the stuff that happens around the work but isn't the work itself.

Microsoft surveyed 31,000 people about this. And here's what those people said: 57% of their day gets eaten up by communication and coordination tasks.

Not strategy. Not creativity. Not problem-solving. Just... managing the work.

Meanwhile, 90% of people who already using AI say it helps them save time on routine tasks. Nielsen Norman Group found that when AI handles the routine business tasks, productivity jumps 66% on average. 

That's not just getting faster at busy work. That's getting back to the work that actually matters.

What happens when the busy work disappears?

I've been talking to teams who've started integrating smart tools into their daily workflows. 

The same story keeps coming up.

Ana from marketing used to spend hours every week manually compiling campaign performance reports from different platforms. Now AI pulls those insights automatically. She spends those recovered hours actually strategizing campaigns that move the needle.

David in accounting spent hours reconciling invoices and chasing missing receipts. Smart systems track everything automatically. He's doing the strategic financial planning he was hired for.

Peter in sales used to spend hours each week manually entering lead information, updating pipeline stages, and preparing follow-up email sequences. AI handles the data entry and suggests personalized outreach now. He's investing that time in building actual relationships and closing deals.

What you can do right now

Start small. Look at your team's weekly routine and ask: what tasks eat up time but don't require human judgment? Those are your AI candidates. Maybe it's the weekly report that takes two hours to compile, or the meeting notes that someone has to clean up and distribute every time.

Don't wait for perfect solutions. The teams seeing results aren't using fancy custom AI built specifically for their company. They're experimenting with tools that already exist - ChatGPT for writing, automated scheduling for meetings, or simple workflow tools that connect their apps. 

Target the energy drains. Sometimes a 15-minute task that happens daily feels more exhausting than a 2-hour task that's actually interesting. Ask your team what makes them sigh every morning when they open their laptop. Those repetitive, mind-numbing tasks are your goldmine for AI automation.

Your workplace's AI moment

Most workplace technology forces people to adapt to systems. AI-powered workplace tools can flip this relationship entirely.

How we deploy AI will determine everything. We can build workplaces that bring out the best in human potential, or we can just make our current inefficiencies faster.

At Joan, we're building toward that first vision. Technology that learns how your teams actually work, then quietly makes everything smoother so you can focus on the work that matters most.

We’ve got something in the works that leans into this even further. Can’t say too much yet, but stay tuned!

The future belongs to humans empowered by machines to do the work only humans can do.

See how smart workplace technology works.

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