How ChatGPT Impacts the Workplace, and Ways to Monitor It

Today’s world comes with an enormous toolkit of digital tools to assist all types of professionals. Currently, one of the most widely used tools is chatGPT, which is a favorite of content writers, copywriters, developers, QA engineers, and HR specialists. Any advanced technology aims to save employees’ time and energy resources, and chatGPT is no exception. But while its unique descriptions and coding samples definitely help save time, it can also drive employees and freelancers to sometimes use it for cheating – if they’re not monitored properly.
Today, we’d like to tell you a story one of our clients recently shared with us. By reviewing Kickidler’s application and time reports that help to see how much time employees spend on certain applications or websites (e.g., https://chat.openai.com/), she was able to detect that her employees are using chatGPT in a not so productive way.
I am the executive manager of one of the medium-sized companies in the US. My employees work in the hybrid format so that part of the week they are working from home. When it comes to managing a company I know how hard it may be and finding new ways or adapting to the changing world is what drives me crazy but also helps in implementing better strategies and receiving more income.
In this article, I will talk about how we implemented ChatGPT at our work and what consequences it had.

How We Started Using ChatGPT at Work

Ann is one of our copywriters. Recently, she’s started using chatGPT at work, and I learnt about that after monitoring her work progress a bit more closely. The report on Ann’s most used applications generated by Kickidler monitoring software showcased an increase in time usage of chatGPT. I also get automatic notifications from Kickidler on each “unproductive” hour of my employees, and that’s how I noticed a drop in work dynamics in Ann’s time report, which meant it was taking Ann less time to perform her work-related tasks. I decided to wait until the end of the month to get a complete overview of her project results. When the monthly report came, it showed almost no difference compared to Ann’s previous month’s progress. So I calmed down and reasoned, “What a wonderful tool it is! It definitely helps her to save time and be more efficient with her tasks. So why don’t we try and implement it in some other departments?”

In a few days’ time I held a meeting, during which I presented the wonders that open AI might bring to our business and the ways employees can use it to save quite some time that can be spent on other projects and, therefore, accelerate business processes in our company.

Ann didn’t like the idea of having to allocate more time towards other work projects, as I later learnt that she would spend her extra time on personal matters while at the same time being paid for 3 extra hours each day when working from home. What’s more, using Kickidler’s screen video recording feature, I managed to discover that she spent almost 2 hours each day working on other freelance projects. So it looked like things were about to change for her. As for our other employees, some of them were already using the AI chatbot, while others were yet to give a try.

We decided to experiment with using ChatGPT at work officially in three teams – our content writers, developers, and HR specialists.

ChatGPT Impact on the Work of Developers and QA Engineers

One month later, I looked at Kickidler’s screen video recordings that showed how chatGPT was used by developers. To be entirely honest with you, since I’ve dabbled in some development in recent years, I’ve got to be honest with you – our developers were able to use all AI chatbot’s capabilities, from task summarization to code generation.

The problem, however, lay in how developers would use their extra hours. Instead of participating in other work projects, they went on doing absolutely nothing, spending that time idly on their personal tasks. Only 20% of the team used the freed up time to learn more about their field of work or participate in other projects. That gave me reason to reconsider certain project deadlines we set for our development team. Overall, this technology did help employees to save some extra working time, yet it didn’t lead to the increase in their productivity.

ChatGPT Helping HR Specialists

I must admit, this was my favorite segment when monitoring chatGPT in action.

ChatGPT helps in automating numerous HR tasks, such as data entry, staff personal records management, and report generation. It can also assist in creating job descriptions and help in onboarding processes. There are two HR specialists in our company, both of whom engage in email correspondence rather frequently, and they found a great way to use chatGPT to form emails.

I learned that they were inquiring into the best courses for the teams, creative teambuilding ideas, latest labor law changes, etc. And that was really fun to monitor.

As matter of fact, I know many companies who could go as far as firing their employees for doing all these data entries and other HR-related tasks, since having their employee management processes digitalized is more suitable for some executives than having a full-on staff member doing that task for 8 hours each day. And while it is sad, it also gives HR managers incentive to hone their skills continuously.

In our company, HR is not yet using all the tools AI provides, but at some point, we will certainly begin monitoring the work of HR specialists to figure out ways to improve their work processes and accelerate their timelines.

ChatGPT Benefits and Shortcomings at Content Writing

Content writers, SEO content strategists, and copywriters seem to use Open AI to its fullest.

Just say, “Write a 2000 word article on the topic of …” and it will write down the text in front of your eyes within 2 minutes. However, if we take the time to study it more closely, we will see some of the text structures repeating, which makes it really easy to understand which text was written by a person and which one by chatGPT.

Kickidler reports showed me that around 50% of our copywriters tend to boost their productivity with such AI tools and devote the freed up hours to self-development or other projects, while the other 50% would use the extra time for personal matters or freelance projects.

To summarize, I would say that using AI tools to facilitate the work of your employees is a huge help, enabling them to save time on tiny tasks, such as texting, sending work emails, writing code, doing data entries, etc. Still, with using such tools a new challenge of wisely managing the freed up time rises. So it’s the manager’s responsibility to fill their specialists’ extra hours with other creative ideas, challenging project tasks or innovative solutions. But alas, I understand that these tools are still new and it may take some time for everybody to get used to managing our time in a more efficient way with the help of advanced technology that was created to help us.

All this monitoring and insight evaluation was carried out not by chatGPT (yet), but with Kickidler employee monitoring software that provides managers with comprehensive detailed reports on employee activity. What I love most about this software is that it’s practically undetectable while its automatic notifications and DLP alerts, remote management features and other various tools can easily replace at least 3 similar solutions, significantly cutting costs and improving business efficiency.

Online Screen Monitoring

An employee computer monitoring tool like Kickidler gives managers the ability to keep an eye on certain employees, entire teams, or even the whole company.

Studies have shown that employees spend up to 30% of their working hours on social media and entertainment websites or even playing games and watching movies.

How exactly does Kickidler’s online screen monitoring feature work?

In the grid display, if an employee is currently engaged in personal matters, the screen around his desktop will be highlighted in red.
A green frame appears when employees are performing their assigned tasks.
The grid also displays the screens of users who are currently inactive as well as a timer that shows the amount of time they’ve been away from their workstations.

You can get a closer look at certain employees by zooming in on their desktop so that it opens in full screen. A histogram of their violations as well as statistics regarding their typical user behavior will be available to you.

Kickidler Employee Monitoring Software