Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has the potential to save Indian workers 51 million hours per week by 2026, according to a study by learning company Pearson.
GenAI can enhance workplace productivity by assisting workers with routine and repetitive tasks, which often dominate their day and contribute to burnout. This insight comes from Pearson’s Skills Outlook series report titled ‘Reclaim the Clock: How Generative AI Can Power People at Work’.
The study highlights the top 10 job tasks that will see the most time savings through GenAI across five countries—Australia, Brazil, India, the UK, and the US—by 2026.
In India, the top five tasks projected to benefit most from GenAI by 2026 are:
1. Promoting products, services, or programs (saving 4,386,799 hours)
2. Collecting data about consumer needs or opinions (saving 3,874,794 hours)
3. Developing marketing or promotional materials (saving 3,513,913 hours)
4. Identifying business or organizational opportunities (saving 3,219,578 hours)
5. Explaining technical details of products or services (saving 3,095,700 hours).
Other significant tasks where time can be saved using GenAI include maintaining current knowledge in areas of expertise, maintaining operational records, communicating operational plans or activities, examining materials or documentation for accuracy or compliance, and evaluating the quality or accuracy of data.
By automating basic tasks with GenAI, companies and their employees can reallocate time to higher-value work that humans excel at, such as strategic thinking, collaboration, decision-making, innovation, problem-solving, empathy, and leadership, the Pearson report stated.
“In nearly every workplace, people spend their day on common, time-consuming tasks that eat away at productivity or their work-life balance,” said Oliver Latham, vice president of strategy and growth for Pearson Workforce Skills. “If those tasks could be augmented with generative AI, employers and their workers could reallocate time to the things that need a more human touch and mean more to their customers,” he added.