Measuring the Effects of AI in the Workplace: Co-Creating a Research Approach with Companies

In the current highly digitized economy, companies are under growing pressure to implement artificial intelligence (AI) applications to remain competitive (e.g., Makridakis, 2017). Therefore, the share of the working population directly interacting with AI in their workplace is likely to increase drastically in the upcoming years. In 2021, 20% of all employees in Germany stated that they were regularly using AI at work. However, when asked on the use of specific systems with AI technology, this percentage is twice as high (Giering et al., 2021). With capabilities increasingly replicating human cognition, AI is continuing to transform the working world by, e.g., substituting or complementing workers in a wide array of tasks (Fregin et al., 2023). This transformation can have various implications for workers’ well-being, job satisfaction, perceived job security, economic prospects as well as the need for upskilling, among others Cramarenco et al., 2023; Giuntella et al., 2023; Lane et al., 2023). Although understanding workers’ perceptions of AI implementation in their job becomes of vital importance for researchers, employers and policy makers, to date, the empirical evidence is still scarce. Establishing such an evidence-based understanding of AI at work would enable …