- A quarter of UK workers say they spend more than 7 hours a week acting as AI middleware
- British workers are more likely to experience busy but unproductive days
- Workers still feel they are making progress and are more productive
New research has argued that human workers are increasingly becoming “middleware”, closing gaps between disconnected AI systems and data sources, reducing the effectiveness of both AI agents and human workers.
The results from Workday say the problem has gotten so bad that UK employees now spend almost an entire working day each week dealing with broken AI tools and systems, the software vendor says.
More specifically, about one in four workers spend up to seven hours a week copying information between apps, reconciling conflicting data and manually feeding context into their AI prompts.
Humans have become AI ‘middleware’
In its report, Workday fully acknowledges that AI has had proven benefits on productivity, but the current inefficiencies of switching between systems, verifying output, and manually moving data effectively negate those gains.
“Too many employees act as the human middleware between disconnected AI systems,” summarized Workday VP Daniel Pell.
The problem may be more pronounced in the UK, where more than 60% often experience busy but unproductive days, up from 43% globally. A similar number (62%) of workers also spend at least half of their work time translating and coordinating between multiple, siled systems, rather than creating actual value.
But the mood of the workers differs from reality. About nine in 10 reported a stronger sense of progress, ownership of their work and a clear connection to organizational goals, and nearly half (45%) already say AI has accelerated work in a productive way.
As for why companies still struggle to integrate AI deeply into workflows, Workday identified a number of barriers, including high volumes of approvals and governance checks (27%), uneven AI training and access (26%), rigid workflows and systems (26%), and poor data quality (24%).
“The companies that see the most value from AI are building it directly into the systems where their people, data and work meet,” Pell concluded.
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