An employee who is preparing a weekly report can take 4 hours to collect the data, compare periods and write an explanation. An approved AI tool sorts the information and writes a first draft in minutes, the employee only needs to check the numbers and the context. That is how four hours are made of one. The employee then does a reflective pause. If the shorter time is now the goal and the additional hours are busy and productive, then the prize for success is the heavier day.
The three hours are not lost. These become capacity and the management chooses to purchase additional output, quality, reduction in backlog, or relief from the pressure. In Dubai, Lumitech is a company that offers software development services in UAE, with a focus on speeding up routine processes through the creation of systems. There’s software that helps to shorten the length of time it takes for a particular task, but it won’t determine what happens to the hours saved. Choice is a management prerogative, as it determines targets, workloads and the form of the job, says CEO Denis Salatin.
AI in UAE Workplaces: Managers Decide What Happens to the Time Saved
It’s a decision that is being made on a large scale. In the current UAE work environment, AI is diffused in parallel with the increased productivity, constant stress, and worry about job security. According to the Middle East Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025, 72 per cent of UAE respondents said they had utilised AI in their work in the last 12 months, and 83 per cent indicated they had improved their productivity. Forty-four per cent used generative AI at least monthly, including 24 per cent who used it every day. Nearly half said that they feel overworked at least once a week and 82 per cent said that job security is very or extremely important.
Those are not pressure indicators as a result of AI. These reveal a reason why workers might be eager for a faster tool and still be hesitant about its implications, a missing piece in the AI and jobs conversation. A software development team can reduce a process and calculate the savings, but then Lumitech’s efforts are finished. The hours that go to those targets is up to the people who own them.
That’s why jobs and AI can’t be quantified solely by job creation and loss. When the time spent on a task changes because of the use of AI, that exchange must be checked.
AI and Jobs: Why Employees Hide Their Best AI Work
But when employees use AI well, they seem to be depriving themselves of their own labor. A survey of 31,000 people from 31 countries by Microsoft and LinkedIn, the Work Trend Index, 2024 found that 52 per cent of AI users are uncomfortable admitting they are using AI on their most important tasks and 53 per cent fear that they look replaceable if they say they are.
These are worldwide statistics, but the likelihood is the same for any employer who has begun to ask their staff to use AI. If it’s not efficient, it’s not told, if it’s not told, if it’s not approved, colleagues try the same things again, if it’s not approved, if it’s not approved, AI use escapes approved systems. Training then marks attendance, but does not explain what is done to complete the work.
A course cannot break the silence as it starts with how performance is judged. The first staff member who admits that a job now takes an hour is watched by employees.
The UAE AI Strategy Scales Faster Than Companies Build Trust
Adoption can be hastened by national policy. It can’t determine the use of the hours saved by the manager.
The UAE AI Strategy, or the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031, was adopted in 2017 and will position the UAE as a leader in the field of AI by 2031. That year the UAE became the first country in the world to have a Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence and to have identified priority sectors like transport, health and education.
What the UAE AI Strategy Leaves to Employers
The UAE AI strategy determines direction and daily rules are different. They emerge within these companies as AI becomes commonplace in the UAE’s workplaces. The saved hours are determined by a line manager when the report is ready for a client, and by the senior leaders with respect to what the saved hours translate to.
When AI in the Workplace Changes the Employee Bargain
The traditional approach to valuing labor is flawed, as seen in the case of AI. Managers could see how much time was spent researching, drafting and checking and feed this into the contribution evidence. In the workplace, AI differentiates between the effort and the output, making activity a loose criterion for value.
Instead, companies need to identify the thing that they value, more output, better evidence, quicker answers, or longer time on hard cases. If not, they wonder if efficiency will aid or restrict their role in their career.
Managers need support. The MBZUAI Executive Program in Abu Dhabi lasts for a duration of 16 weeks and has educated more than 200 senior leaders. It goes deeper than company training – implementation, business impact, social impacts as well as mechanics of the tool.
Employee AI Training Is Only Half the Job for AI in UAE Companies
When the manager is trained, it only partially bridges the gap. The employee still learns to work quicker, then goes back to the same performance system he or she was evaluated on.
The first step in employee AI training is to make a management decision. It may be time saved that can result in a reduction of a backlog, a quality check, quicken the response to customers, or the investment in a new skill and staff should not be made only after they’ve demonstrated their speed.
AI in the Workplace Needs Manager Training Too
Typically, AI training for staff is geared towards the user of the system. However, the AI in the workplace is subject to the targets set by the person, the manager, so without the manager there is no one to set targets and no one to assess performance.
Before teams take the leap into using AI more extensively, managers should consider three questions:
- What is the desired outcome – increased speed, quality, customer service or capacity?
- What will the company do with the released time by AI?
- How will the role of a developer be diminished by the use of strong AI?
Answers provide a rationale for AI upskilling and allow managers to assess AI skills based on outcomes rather than activity.
AI Skills Spread When Sharing Them Feels Safe
Helpful AI skills include providing clear instructions, verifying data sources, assessing data quality, understanding the model’s capabilities and limitations, and determining when a task requires human intervention. They are shared among employees more readily if they do not impact the employee negatively, making a workflow part of a team standard, and errors with data or accuracy come before the customer.
The concept of safety here is clarity of consequences. While employers may not guarantee that all positions will remain unchanged, they can discuss the processes involved in decision making and the impact that new skills will have on promotion.
A Clear Deal on Productivity and AI Skills
Businesses don’t have to have a different agreement with each AI product or service—the only thing they need is an understanding of productivity after implementation. It’s possible because of four commitments:
- State the desired outcome: time, quality, capacity or access to information.
- Make one clear how the hours of improvements contribute to freeing up hours for the human, and that these hours do not become additional workload.
- Attribute credit to those who share methods, limits and risks, since sharing a method doesn’t imply little judgement was required.
- Review the role (training, targets, career path should change if a significant portion of the role changes).
Such an agreement is only viable if the company evidences the change.
AI and Jobs: Measure What Changed Instead of Who Finished the Course
Upskilling workforce is a weak indicator of course completion. Organizations should seek to understand if the AI led to a decrease in re-work, better decision making and a change in workload as designed, as time spent verifying faulty output is not a benefit.
Development of digital skills then has a more definite purpose: to develop a workforce that is equipped with AI capabilities, works with the approved systems, looks for inefficient results and talks about productivity without alarming efficiency.
Who Gets the Saved Hours Decides the Future of Work in the UAE
The stress on skills continues to grow. The World Economic Forum (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2025 finds that 39 per cent of all workers’ basic skills will be reshaped by 2030, with analytical thinking being the most desired skill while AI and big data are the fastest growing.
That’s going to encourage additional firms to train. It will only hold if employees are aware of the opportunity costs of a faster result, since an AI workforce transformation is a process that relies on employees volunteering to find better ways to do work, and people don’t volunteer to work harder for a quicker result.
Denis Salatin’s management question below AI upskilling is… Purchase order is required for access to AI. A policy must be decided on who receives the saved hours, and the future will unfold based on that choice of a policy and what the UAE employers will create.
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