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Zoom has released its latest report on artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. After surveying how more than 11,000 employees and leaders across eight global market. Commissioned by Zoom and conducted by Morning Consult, the report sought to uncover how leaders and employees are spending their time at work, and whether their most time-consuming tasks could be aided by AI.

Modern distributed teams are always looking for ways to increase productivity while boosting effective communication. But much of collaboration involves time-consuming tasks like sending meeting summaries and updates or organising information. These mundane tasks can inadvertently create a higher productivity toll. But having AI to automate or aid in certain tasks could help teams solve this collaboration paradox.

“Distributed workforces aren’t new. Businesses have been supporting global workforces for a long time,” said Ricky Kapur, Head of Asia Pacific at Zoom. “Today, we have a new tool in our arsenal to help us support modern collaboration by streamlining workflows, automating or assisting with rote tasks, and more. This means that teams, whether employees or leaders, can focus their time and efforts on more impactful activities like creative ideation or decision-making to help increase output, drive revenue, and ultimately result in meaningful business impact.”

Across Asia Pacific (APAC) respondents (Australia, Japan, Singapore), 70% of employees agreed that they had more to gain than lose from using AI at work, the highest percentage across regions.  Meanwhile, 73% of APAC leaders said they were favourable towards AI.

Saving Time Is a Top Benefit of AI

When employees and leaders were asked to identify which benefits of using AI at work were the most helpful, top responses were related to saving time—whether by reducing the number of repetitive tasks, completing work faster, or using that time for something else.

• 94% of Singapore employees identified having fewer repetitive tasks and more time to focus on other things as top benefits of AI.
• 91% of Singapore leaders identified fewer repetitive tasks as a benefit of AI, along with completing work faster.

Close to half of leaders in Singapore whose teams use AI at work also saw other benefits, including having a happier team (49%) and making better decisions (48%).

There Is a Difference in Opinion Nonetheless

While employees and leaders may agree that saving time is a great benefit, they differ on how exactly they want AI to help them with their workday. Singapore employees are more interested in using AI tools for efficiency and automation, while leaders here want to use them for assistance during and after their meetings.

Singapore employees prefer to use AI to:

1. Automate repetitive tasks (46%).
2. Get real-time help during meetings (41%).
3. Summarise meetings, chat messages, and notes (41%).

Meanwhile, Singapore leaders prefer using AI to:

1. Get real-time help during meetings (39%).
2. Have better sound and video quality during meetings (36%).
3. Draft emails and chat messages (35%).

Companies May Be Holding Their Own Teams Back

Among those who said they do not use AI at work, 56% of Singapore employees said it is because their company as a whole does not utilise it. Of those who do use AI at work, 59% say their company provides AI tools—which also means that the other 41% need to be self-motivated to seek out these tools.

Yet, key barriers to adoption cited by Singapore leaders put employees in the driver’s seat. As much as 80% of leaders said that their teams were resistant to using new tools. Meanwhile, 80% also highlighted that their teams were used to working a certain way, the highest across the eight markets surveyed.

“APAC stands out in our survey as the region most bullish on AI, yet there remain blockers within organisations that prevent teams from enjoying the productivity and collaboration boosts from incorporating AI into their workstreams.  The clear disconnect between leaders’ perceptions of and employees’ attitudes toward AI must be addressed before their teams can fully unlock the true business value of AI,” added Kapur.

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