In today’s day and age of digital life, with work from home options becoming common, the lines between work and home is getting blurred. With this blurred space, come the challenges of Stress, anxiety, and depression as some of the common mental health issues affecting employees, that seem to often lead to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, lower job satisfaction and increased rate of attrition.
Today AI is reshaping the workplace in numerous ways with positive and negative effects. The future of AI in the workplace is shaping up to be transformative, with major shifts in job roles, productivity, and how businesses operate. While AI is promising enhancement in productivity, saving time by reducing repetitive tasks, simplifying work flow and creating more space for more productive and creative headspace, it is also coming with the challenge of eating away jobs. With so many ongoing discussions going everywhere on how we should approach AI technologies, it is raising concerns about its impact on our ability to balance work and life. Ensuring that AI contributes positively to this balance will depend on how it’s implemented and managed by individuals and organizations.
To fully benefit from AI, Organizations and Individuals need to adopt smart strategies to strike a good balance between work and life.
- Use AI tools to set clear boundaries of work hours to help stay disconnected from work after work hours.
- Take help of AI systems to create a Work Life Balance culture by saving time from and using the time for various work life balance initiatives like after work employee wellness programs, conductive mental health programs etc
- Use AI tools to the benefit, bring in more flexible ways and means at work place to meet work-life balance. AI systems can be made customized to individual’s work patterns and suggest optimal time for tasks, needed alarms for water food and movement breaks, etc.
- Use AI tools and systems to take on more complex and repetitive tasks in order to free up individuals from unnecessary load to focus on more creative ad strategic work, which can lead to a better work-life balance.
- Use AI tools for ethical implementation that can set boundaries and respect personal privacy at work.
- Use AI tools to increase mental health awareness like AI health driven mental assessments, virtual therapy sessions, personalized and tailor made programs for stress management, positive mental health programs, counseling sessions, self health care, etc
- Use AI tools to constantly monitor one’s own stress scores and design stress management strategies.
AI is on its fast developmental path and today no one can predict exactly how it will evolve in the future and paint the exact picture of how AI will become part of our lives but definitely it is going to change the present way of working. It is unlikely to replace all jobs but will certainly reshape the workforce. Organizations will have to focus on the human-AI collaboration and continuous learning to adapt to this evolving landscape.