These five personas show how workers approach AI says Slack survey

A new survey from Slack and Salesforce showed that organizations struggling to improve AI adoption could benefit from personalizing their approach to employees. 

The latest Slack Workforce Index survey reached out to 5,000 full-time desk workers on their AI usage. It found five personas of people using or not using AI in the workplace. 

The personas:

• the Maximalist, who uses AI multiple times a week and talks to others about it;
• the Underground, or those who do use AI a lot but hesitate to share this fact with their colleagues;
• the Rebel, those who don’t buy the AI hype and even believe using it is unfair;
• the Superfan, or those who are excited about AI but do not use it at work yet;
• the Observer, who haven’t begun integrating AI into their work and are waiting with caution and interest.

Christina Janzer, senior vice president of research and analytics at Slack, said during a briefing that the best way to get better adoption of AI in the workplace is to identify each persona in the office and tailor approaches to them.

“Personas are a reflection of the different ways that employees are using and not using AI, as well as an understanding of the variety of emotions and experiences that people have surrounding AI at work,” Janzer said. 

She added that people’s emotional responses to AI “help us really predict adoption behaviors as well as the continued engagement of those behaviors because we recognize there is no one-size-fits-all approach.”

According to Janzer, 30% of the survey respondents said they are Maximalists, followed by Underground at 20%, while Rebels represented 19% of those surveyed. One interesting fact, Janzer noted, is that many Rebels are women, and more than half are age 45 or older. 

AI in the workplace has not been fully adopted yet

As much as organizations talk about their AI applications for the workplace, it’s still unclear if adoption is as widespread as the AI hype will lead you to believe. 

Microsoft’s fourth annual Work Trend Index in May showed that 75% of employees use AI in the workplace, though they haven’t seen much guidance from their companies about it. A February Slack Workforce Index found that 81% of workers said they are more productive with AI. 

However, other surveys, like this one from EY, showed the opposite. In the report, EY found that 71% of 1,000 employees have concerns about AI, and 48% are more concerned about the technology the more they are exposed to it. 

With conflicting figures, maybe there is something to Slack’s approach of tailoring how to talk to employees to use AI. 

Janzer said companies would do well to mobilize Maximalists’ enthusiasm for the technology while encouraging Undergrounds to be more confident in sharing what makes them excited about AI. 

“Give Maximalists the space to share with one another and share the ways they’re using AI with their colleagues,” she said. “The call for action around Undergrounds is to bring them out of the shadows with clear permissions, guidelines and encouragement about their AI usage.” 

For Rebels, Janzer suggests enterprises approach them with more resources like training and showing that using AI is not fundamentally unfair, that it is a technology that drives productivity rather than cheating. 

Training will also entice many Superfans and Observers to try AI in the workplace, especially if the company helps facilitate sessions showing the technology’s value. The small, incremental use cases could make these two personas more comfortable bringing AI to their work. 

Slack also developed a quiz for people to figure out their AI persona, which it hopes will help workers identify how they approach AI in the workplace. Apparently, I’m an Underground (except the world knows I use AI for work…).