Businesses are all carrying digital debt. The volume of data, emails and chats has outpaced their ability to process it all, according to the 2023 Work Trend Index report: “Will AI Fix Work?” newly released by Microsoft.

The 2023 Work Trend Index surveyed 31,000 people across industries in 31 countries including Viet Nam as well as trillions of signals from emails, meetings, and chats across Microsoft 365, plus labour trends on LinkedIn. The data shows that the pace of work has accelerated faster than humans can keep up, and it’s impacting innovation.

The report showed that every minute spent on managing this digital debt is a minute not spent on creative work.

Specifically, 76 per cent of respondents in Viet Nam said they don't have enough time and energy to get things done – this rate is 64 per cent globally. They are 6.6 times more likely to struggle with innovation and strategic thinking.

Sixty five per cent of Vietnamese leaders expressed concerns about the lack of creativity and innovation at work – compared to 60 per cent globally. Only 63 per cent of Vietnamese workers consider their presence in meetings necessary – almost twice the global rate (35 per cent).

In particular, 79 per cent of Vietnamese workers agree that they cannot maintain concentration throughout the working day.

According to Microsoft 365 usage statistics, the average person spends 57 per cent of their time communicating and only 43 per cent of their time on creative works. The leading cause of productivity loss is ineffective meetings.

The Authority of Information Technology Application under the Ministry of Information and Communications believed that digital data and customers have become the two most valuable assets of businesses in the digital transformation era. The competition in the digital transformation era is no longer about prices, but intelligence through deep understanding of customer data.

With a large volume of digital data, it is not easy to exploit and understand those data. Therefore, data processing plays a key role in the overall operation of enterprises.

In order to turn data into the keys to a breakthrough, every employee needs to have the skills to grasp the right tools and software to effectively exploit, filter, analyse, store and present data.

In which, artificial intelligence (AI) creates a completely new way of working, not only a tool, but has become a virtual assistant that liberates workers from the burden of huge digital data and promotes creative innovation.

As the work landscape has changed with AI development, people need to change too. The most important thing for every leader is how to take advantage of AI to reduce workload, promote creativity and build employees' ability to use AI, the report said.

In this context, the next-generation AI is expected to lift the weight of work. Organisations that move first to embrace AI will break the cycle – increasing creativity and productivity for everyone, it added.

While 54 per cent of Vietnamese workers said they were worried that Al would replace their job position, up to 90 per cent wanted to assign as much work as possible to Al to reduce the workload (this rate globally at 49 per cent and 70 per cent respectively).

Nine out of 10 Vietnamese workers feel comfortable using AI not only for administrative tasks (94 per cent) but also for analytical work (94 per cent) and even creative aspects in their work (91 per cent).

Affirming that the speed of work has increased faster than human ability and affecting innovation, Nguyen Quynh Tram, general director of Microsoft Vietnam, said that every employee needs to have the ability to use and create instructions for AI. The vast majority of Vietnamese business owners said their employees will need new skills to prepare for the rise of AI. — VNS