New report finds employees feel guilty when using AI in the workplace
Employers are being urged to provide clear guidance surrounding the use of artificial intelligence tools in the workplace amid findings that employees feel "guilty" when using the technology at work.
New findings from Employment Hero revealed that 50% of Gen Z employees feel guilty when using AI to produce their work.
Another 52% feel like they're cheating when they use AI to do parts of their job, according to the report.
"AI shouldn't feel like cheating. It should feel like using any other tool that helps people do their jobs better," said Kevin Fitzgerald, UK managing director at Employment Hero.
Fitzgerald underscored the need to provide clear guidance in order to better understand the impact of AI in the workplace.
"If workers don't have clear guidance, they'll continue to learn in the shadows, making it harder for businesses to understand AI's true impact, manage risk and support skills development," he said.
"The opportunity is to bring AI into the open, build trust, be transparent, and help a generation use it confidently."
Growing AI use at work
Employees' growing guilt over using AI comes amid widespread enthusiasm from both employers and employees when it comes to the technology.
More than a third (36%) of employers said AI skills are one of the top attributes that they look for in job applicants, just behind digital literacy (39%).
Among employees, 58% of Gen Z employees said they feel positive about AI becoming a bigger part of their working life, with 81% saying they have taken it upon themselves to learn AI skills through social media.
"There is a real contradiction emerging for young workers. They are being told that AI skills will be critical to their careers, and many are clearly enthusiastic about building those skills, but they still feel guilty when they actually use the tools," Fitzgerald said.
The result is the emergence of shadow AI, where employees use AI tools without their employer's knowledge. Employment Hero's report found that 42% of Gen Z workers are guilty of this, with the same proportion saying they often present AI-generated work as their own.
"When half of Gen Z feel guilty using AI at work, and more than four in ten are doing so without their employer's knowledge, it shows that workplace norms have not yet caught up with employee behaviour," Fitzgerald said.
