People and Robots
We describe ourselves very mechanically when we’re stressed and burned out. We use words like zombie, empty shell, going through the motions, disengaged. All very mechanical. Almost like a robot.
Work stress and burnout have been on the rise. Here’s a paragraph from a 2022 APA trends report:
“As in 2020, American workers across the board saw heightened rates of burnout in 2021, and according to APA’s 2021 Work and Well-being Survey of 1,501 U.S. adult workers, 79% of employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey. Nearly 3 in 5 employees reported negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest, motivation, or energy (26%) and lack of effort at work (19%). Meanwhile, 36% reported cognitive weariness, 32% reported emotional exhaustion, and an astounding 44% reported physical fatigue—a 38% increase since 2019.”
When people are burned out, they can usually still do tasks. They can fill out the forms and move the things from A to B. But when we’re burned out, we start to do things less like a person and more like a robot.
If a robot can fill out the forms and move the things from A to B, it will usually do those kinds of jobs better than a person. It turns out that robots make better robots than people do.
People are worried about how new technologies like AI are disrupting the labor market. What jobs won’t exist in ten years? As some say, the robots are coming for our jobs. There’s probably truth to this.
But it may also be true that burnout and disengagement have turned many of us into fleshy robots already.
There are opportunities for leaders and organizations to use AI and other technologies to alleviate stress and burnout. If we can take three toxically stressed, high-strung shifts per week and turn them into three shifts filled with healthy challenges and the energy and tools to meet them, we make room for people to engage in hard work in a sustainably engaging and rewarding way. If we can take a person from 50-60 hours per week of working mostly like a robot and turn it into 30 or 40 hours per week of working like a person, life gets a lot better for a lot of people.
Pay attention to job displacement. But also look for opportunities to use new tools to make room for people to work more like people and less like robots, because people aren’t robots, and robots aren’t people.