Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

THIS MAY JUST be one newsletter writer’s opinion, but ChatGPT is not a very good writer. It, and all the other large language models (LLMs) out there, are sometimes just okay writers, but nobody is really dazzled by the quality of its outputs.

Generating passable written material is proving to be one of AI’s lower-value-generating tricks, although for the average white-collar user it has proven to be one of the most appealing. Writing can be quite laborious, after all, so for those for whom writing does not come easily, LLMs appear to be solving a pain point, and thus AI-generated copy is now everywhere.

That contradiction comes at a cost, though, and researchers from Stanford University and BetterUp Labs are suggesting the volume of what they term ‘workslop’ is now actually causing productivity to drop, as workers spend increasing amounts of time correcting, re-writing or re-doing work done with an LLM.

Workslop, which the research team defines as “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task,” is growing into a larger problem in professional work. “Of 1,150 U.S.-based full-time employees across industries, 40 per cent report having received workslop in the last month,” the researchers found, with those that encounter it estimating that it accounts for 15.4 per cent of work content they interact with.

The researchers also discovered this content was producing more work than the initial task itself. One retail director recalls receiving a piece of AI-generated work product from a coworker upstream and said, “I had to waste more time following up on the information and checking it with my own research. I then had to waste even more time setting up meetings with other supervisors to address the issue. Then I continued to waste my own time having to redo the work myself.”

In a nutshell, though professionals are enamoured with how quickly and passably AI can produce work product, the quality is lacking — and that often becomes someone else’s problem. “The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream,” the authors said. “In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver.”

Workslop is one more voice in a chorus of questions being asked about the viability of AI, one that is growing louder and louder. A few weeks ago, we wrote about an MIT study that found that 95 per cent of all AI pilots had not shown returns, for instance. “The main story seems to be that there is widespread adoption of AI, but that it’s not proving to be that useful, has not resulted in widespread productivity gains, and often ends up creating messes that human beings have to clean up,” wrote Jason Koebler.

“Workslop may feel effortless to create but exacts a toll on the organization,” the Stanford and BetterUp researchers summed up. “Workslop is an excellent example of new collaborative dynamics introduced by AI that can drain productivity rather than enhance it.”

HEALTH & BENEFITS

Financial planning as a workplace perk

As individuals strive for stability and security, organizations have a unique opportunity to offer financial planning as a valuable employee benefit

WITH MUCH OF the workforce feeling the pinch of cost of living, more people are turning to their employer for help — not necessarily for a raise, mind you, but for a bit of help trying to navigate new financial realities.

They aren’t crazy for doing so, either, as experts say that employers are increasingly thinking about how they can offer financial wellness benefits as a retention and recruitment tool.

Financial wellness benefits differ from just offering additional finances (which, hey, never not appreciated!). For tenured staff, it might look like an employer playing a more active role in offering retirement planning; for companies looking to attract new talent, it can be exploring student loan repayment schemes. For everyone else, it might be something like benefits that offset the cost of accessing financial advisors, on top of things like standard-issue retirement matching programs, or loan programs to cover emergency expenses.

A full 26 per cent of employees recently surveyed by Bank of America said that they are now relying on services offered by employers for issues like emergency savings and debt repayment — double the share that said the same two years ago.

“The modern employee wants help with their broader financial goals,” said Lorna Sabbia, head of Workplace Benefits at Bank of America. “Employers should consider additional resources to support their workforce in ways that bolster their long-term goals while also helping them tackle short-term challenges.”

Kai Walker, a managing director at Bank of America, points out that “there’s a relationship between one’s financial wellness, their emotional wellness, as well as their physical wellness — and when one of those gets out of balance, it seems to affect the other two.”

But these remain, for now, rare benefits to see in the job market, even though the evidence suggests employees would benefit from it, and that it aids in employee loyalty. “While almost all employers feel responsible for their employees’ financial wellbeing, less than half offer financial wellness programs to support it,” the Bank of America report found.

“While employees say they’re stressed just thinking about their financial situation, many employers are focused on offering traditional benefits alone — like retirement and healthcare — rather than including them in a broader framework of resources that benefits what employees value as their needs and goals evolve.”

RECRUITING

The old bait-and-switch

A new report reveals that employers are increasingly engaging in career catfishing, leading to mismatched expectations and dissatisfaction in the workplace

IN THE PAST, we’ve written about the problem of ghost jobs — those public job postings by a real company for a position they don’t really intend to fill. Well, perhaps employers are growing a little shiftier in their tactics then, because a new report from Monster.com found that for a huge number of jobseekers, it isn’t ghost jobs that are a growing problem, but catfish jobs.

Nearly 80 per cent of jobseekers say they had been catfished into a job that didn’t match the description. Almost half of all jobseekers say they were handed different job responsibilities, while one in five say that company culture was misrepresented. A further nine per cent said the compensation or benefits were different.

It’s a practice that looks to be on the upswing. In 2023, hiring software firm Greenhouse found that 20 per cent of people surveyed said they’d been catfished this way, while Monster found it was much higher.

“Monster’s new data may suggest the situation is worsening, and employer catfishing is becoming more common — perhaps enabled by technology, or sheer burnout among HR managers,” wrote Inc.com’s Kit Eaton.

The root of the problem is there is still a wide gulf between what candidates want and what companies are offering. “Some employers don’t want to change company practices or policies to match jobseeker expectations, but they still want to attract high-quality talent,” said Kimberley Phillips, director of the Center for Career Development at Bridgewater College in Virginia. “So, that’s where we tend to see more of the corporate catfishing coming into play.”

It might go without saying that this kind of thing doesn’t help employee morale much, and the folks at Monster (which has a vested interest in its job board being accurate) really wish employers would cut it out. “Career catfishing is more than just an awkward mismatch — it’s a trust issue that impacts careers and businesses alike,” they said. “By prioritizing transparency and honesty on both sides of the hiring equation, jobseekers and employers can create stronger, more successful matches.

TECHNOLOGY

The return of the clicky-clackies

Popular among gamers and programmers, people are finding bliss in mechanical keyboard

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