Is AI Saving Time Or Just Raising The Pace

SHRM’s 2026 workplace report has the awkward version of the productivity story: among workers using AI, 50% say performance expectations rose and 54% say the pace of work increased. More than 3 in 5 report more work overall. That is not automatically bad. Some jobs needed the copy-paste scraped off. But “AI saved time” gets slippery if the saved minutes are immediately auctioned back to management as a faster baseline. My test would be boring and useful: after rollout, name one expectation that went down. Fewer late pings, fewer status checks, fewer drafts to review, fewer impossible turnaround times. If nothing relaxes, the tool did not return time. It made the treadmill proud of itself.