A new report raises questions about how the rapid growth of artificial intelligence tools in the workplace is impacting employees.
According to ActivTrak’s 2026 Work Environment Report, compared to 2023, “80% of employees now use AI tools, up from 53%.”
It also found that “the risk of disengagement increased by 23 percent,” indicating that around one in four employees do not feel fully engaged in their work.
Business types included in the report include financial services, legal services, insurance, healthcare, and more. Over 443 million hours of digital workplace activity has been collected from 1,111 organizations and 163,638 employees over the past three years.
And this comes after a Harvard Business Review study earlier this month warned that a phenomenon researchers are calling an “AI brain fly” is “real and important.”
The researchers in this study defined “AI brainfly” as “mental fatigue caused by overuse of AI tools or oversight beyond cognitive ability.”
A Harvard Business Review study describes a brain fly as “a mental hangover that leaves you unable to think clearly, consisting of poor concentration, slowed decision-making, and headaches after frequent back-and-forth use of tools, resulting in several people having to physically step away from their computers to ‘reset.'”
They found that 25.9 percent of employees in marketing-related jobs experienced a brain fly, as did 19.3 percent in human resources/human resources, 17.9 percent in operations, 17.8 percent in engineering/software development, and 16.7 percent in finance and accounting.
According to the study, supervision is the most mentally taxing aspect of AI engagement, with 14% of those surveyed saying they are putting more mental effort into their work.
Advanced AI monitoring was predicted to increase mental fatigue in participants by 12%. Increased AI surveillance is predicted to increase information overload by 19%.
Are employees “not being challenged enough”?
According to the ActiveTrak report, organizations now use an average of seven AI tools per organization, up from an average of two in 2023.
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Stephanie Enders, chief delivery officer at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, said this was the part of the report she found “very interesting.”
“I think basic literacy is important to get the most out of the tools you’re investing in,” she said. “So you actually know which tools to choose, and you know what the tiers of tool fluency are that you can improve on more quickly, because you have a baseline AI literacy across all roles.”
“Rather than AI influencing behavior, I think it’s probably amplifying what’s already happening in certain businesses,” she said.
And even though “average working hours fell by 2 percent,” production hours increased by 5 percent to an average of 6 hours and 36 minutes per day, suggesting more work is being completed in less time., A report was found.
Collaboration time also increased by 34% and “now accounts for 13% of total production time, up from 10% in 2023.”
With the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace, we found that time spent across business applications has increased by 27% to 346%. This included a 104% increase in email, a 145% increase in chat and messaging, and a 94% increase in business management tools.
But time spent on other areas, including concentration, is decreasing.
ActivTrak’s report states that “concentration efficiency (the percentage of total work time spent on focused, uninterrupted work) fell to 60 percent in 2025, a decline of 5 percent since 2023.”
They also found that “average focus session time decreased by 9% from 14 minutes 23 seconds to 13 minutes 7 seconds, and focus time decreased by an additional 2% (minus 4 minutes).”
Despite the increase in AI tools used in various fields, the average daily attention span of AI users has decreased by 23 minutes.
“Rather than working overload, more employees than ever are chronically under-challenged,” the report states.
“Productive time” on Saturdays also increased by 46%, averaging 4 hours and 37 minutes. Sunday production hours also increased by 58%.
“As new technology becomes more widespread, it’s really important that people research what impact it will have, because the more we learn, the better we can do our jobs and the more choices we can make as individuals,” Enders said.
“I have seen that AI tools can sometimes act as a mirror to the practices already in place within an organization,” Enders says.
“So if you have limited focus space, etc., the AI will reflect that, making it potentially difficult to get more focus time, or you may be relying on AI to address the focus time gap.”
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