AI Saves Time but Work Expands: 85% Report More Tasks

Jabra released WorkLife 2026 on October 13, 2026, with 85% of more than 6,000 surveyed knowledge workers spending more time on at least one kind of work than a year earlier, as IT Brief’s coverage of the study details. The survey spans the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland and India.

The findings offer no evidence of a broad reduction in workload as AI becomes more common. Frequent AI use coincides with more collaboration and more activity in several kinds of work, but the survey does not measure minutes saved by AI or follow where that time went. Its comparisons describe workers’ answers and associations between groups, rather than effects caused by AI.

More work appears across several categories

The Jabra WorkLife research page describes an analysis of almost 200 variables and highlights the share of workers doing more of at least one kind of work. That measure concerns categories of activity: it does not mean every respondent worked longer hours or took on more individual tasks.

Across all respondents, 51% spent more time on strategic planning and analysis than a year earlier, 50% on creative work and 49% on administration. These are shares of people experiencing an increase in each category, rather than percentage increases in time spent. A worker could have an increase in one category and a decrease in another.

That overlap is visible in the wider results: 35% spent less time on at least one kind of work. Among heavy AI users, 56% spent more time on strategic planning, compared with 35% of light users and non-users; for creative work, the comparison was 56% against 30%. Administration and coordination rose for 57% of heavy users against 38% of the comparison group. The groups may differ in their roles and responsibilities, so these gaps cannot establish how much extra work AI produced.

Task-level efficiency and a fuller day can coexist. A faster first draft, for example, may leave room for revisions, analysis or coordination, but that is an illustration of a possible mechanism, not a sequence tracked by the survey. The firmer finding is that substantial shares of workers spent more time on strategic, creative and administrative work during the same period.

Collaboration rises alongside individual work

Greater AI use also coincides with more contact between colleagues. Overall, 42% collaborated more than a year earlier and 13% collaborated less. Among frequent AI users, 64% worked more with colleagues, compared with 25% of less frequent users. The comparison does not establish that AI improved collaboration or caused the additional interaction.

Meetings give that interaction some context. Forty percent spent most of their meeting time solving problems, while 39% spent it making decisions. Work on an individual task may become faster while a group still needs to weigh options and agree on a result. Those figures describe the purpose workers assigned to their meetings; they do not measure decision quality or meeting efficiency.

More collaboration can therefore sit alongside an expanding workload. People may gain time on one task and spend time with colleagues on the work that follows it, although the survey cannot track that transfer. The distinction matters because a change in the speed of a task is different from a change in the amount of work across a day.

Manager support aligns with AI use and career confidence

Workers who considered their manager capable of supporting AI use were more likely to use AI daily: 65%, compared with 27% among those without that perceived support. Half of the respondents did not describe their manager as capable of helping them with AI. The gap could reflect team practices, job requirements or how experienced users assess their managers, as well as the support managers provide.

Career confidence follows a similar divide. Workers with an AI-capable manager gave their career optimism an average of 8.3 out of 10, against 5.5 among those without one. The study also identifies roughly 15% of workers as “AI Superusers”: people who use AI in everyday work, have organizational support and have adapted how they work. This group has some of the highest satisfaction, preparedness and career optimism levels in the survey. Because the group is defined by several conditions, its outlook cannot be attributed to AI use alone.

Jabra president Calum MacDougall called for “leaders listening and engaging with their teams” in the company’s announcement. Toluna conducted the survey on behalf of the Jabra Research Institute in May 2026. Its comparisons show where support, daily use and optimism occur together; they cannot predict the effect of changing a manager’s approach.

The change is uneven across seniority levels

The experience of change differs sharply by role. Forty-seven percent of senior leaders experienced significant or fundamental change in their work over the past year, compared with 18% of workers in non-managerial roles. Among non-managers, 64% had received no AI training or only a brief introduction, versus 26% of senior leaders. Of those who had received training, 39% of non-managers considered it very or extremely relevant to their role, compared with 76% of senior leaders.

Meanwhile, 32% of all respondents experienced little or no change in their work. They had some of the study’s lowest levels of satisfaction, preparedness and career optimism. The emerging consequence for workers is uneven: some describe more analysis, coordination and decisions as AI use grows, while others see little change and have less access to training they find relevant.

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