Deloitte report reveals how AI can give people one day off a week, without docking pay

Despite early successful trials, most Australian businesses are resisting adopting a four-day working week. But new Deloitte research reveals how AI can accelerate that change.

Artificial intelligence has made four-day working weeks without loss of pay a real option, but few Australian employees are willing to embrace the change, according to Deloitte.

More than a quarter of Australia’s economy, representing $600bn of activity, is set to be disrupted by generative artificial intelligence as the new technology becomes more mainstream, with finance, information technology, media, professional services and education the biggest sectors facing upheaval.

But Deloitte Australia chief executive Adam Powick said rather than turning a blind eye or seeking to ban the use of AI, he said business should embrace the opportunities it offers.

“Leaders like me need to accept that this technology is real and recognise that our role is to harness and guide the responsible application of generative AI,” he said.

“We need to rapidly educate ourselves on the potential and implications of generative AI in our settings and actively encourage adoption, innovation and the sharing of ideas and concepts across our organisations.”

The biggest opportunity is making the four-day working week, without any loss of pay, a reality.

Several of Australia’s biggest companies — including Telstra, Medibank, Nib and Grant Thornton — have either drafted plans involving shortened working weeks with no loss of productivity or cementing their shift to hybrid working, sparked during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But most employees have resisted adopting what is set to become one of the decade’s biggest workplace revolutions, according to a report titled “Generation AI: Ready or not, here we come” from Deloitte Access Economics and the Deloitte AI Institute.

Deloitte Australia CEO Adam Powick says leaders need to embrace the responsible use of AI rather than turn a blind eye to it or seek to ban the technology. Picture: Lucas Dawson

“Despite promising results from businesses that have trialled four-day work weeks, only a small number of Australian employers are implementing it, versus several hundred employers globally,” the report states.

“It has become clear that four-day working weeks look very different depending on the number of individuals involved and their business. The guiding principles seem to be focused on maintaining business outputs while helping employees find more flexibility in their working lives and protecting their wellbeing.

“For example, in some trials businesses are using the 100:80:100 principle – employees deliver 100 per cent of the output, in 80 per cent of the time with 100 per cent of the pay (and leave). This means employees are taking the fifth day they would previously work to knock over chores, do meal prep, go to appointments they can’t schedule on the weekend, give back to the community, or learn something new.”

But the biggest reason that has stopped the widespread adoption of a four-day working week across the economy is that it benefits knowledge — or white collar — workers, who don’t have to perform their duties onsite, unlike retail workers, nurses, firefighters and others who need to turn up for each shift.

It’s a problem former Bupa Asia Pacific chief executive Hisham El-Ansary was grappling with earlier this year.

“It’s fine when you kind of contemplate an office worker and you say ‘well, you can work whenever you want … here are the outcomes you have to deliver and if you can do it in four days, great’. But how do you translate that to the more than two thirds of our people who are on the front line? Until we’ve got a bit of an answer for that, I think we need to just tread with caution,” Mr El-Ansary said.

According to the Deloitte report — based on a survey of 2000 employees and 550 students — those who are using AI tools have so far saved the average worker 2.5 hours a week. But the more frequent the use, the more frequent the savings.

“Daily users of Gen AI are saving an impressive 5.3 hours each week,” the Deloitte report stated.

“The average professional spends 27 per cent of their time on administrative tasks — equivalent to 6.8 hours per week — making the possibility of a 30-hour week enabled by Gen AI very real.”

Crucially, 32 per cent of employees surveyed used some form of Gen AI for work purposes, but about two thirds of those people believe their manager doesn’t know about it.

According to Deloitte, the most common reason they used Gen AI to save time at work was to conduct research (59 per cent); generate and iterate on ideas (47 per cent); and to write internal communications (42 per cent).

“Another study of more than 5000 customer service agents found that using a Gen AI-based conversational assistant increased productivity by 14 per cent on average, with the greatest improvement found for more junior staff members.”