The price of invisible work – what do we lose when everything works too efficiently?

IBM recently published a case study on its internal AskHR system, presenting impressive numbers: a 40% reduction in HR operating costs, 94% problem-solving effectiveness, and 2.1 million AI-powered calls per year. It is a success story in its purest form – an organization that has learned to operate more efficiently, faster, and cheaper. But as we look at these figures, we begin to wonder: what happened to the thousands of daily interactions between people? Where will the HR employees who used to answer questions about holidays, explain sick leave, and help with paycheck information go?

Efficiency sounds like an indisputable virtue. Who wouldn’t want an answer to their question instantly, without waiting in line or depending on someone’s availability? The system does not have a bad day, it is not irritated by a repeated question for the hundredth time, and it does not transfer its own frustrations to the interlocutor. In the world of “zero-touch support”, everything just works. But doesn’t this lack of friction, this perfect fluidity, take something essential away from us?

Every interaction in an organization is more than just an exchange of information. When we ask someone in HR about the leave policy, we send signals with our words: how do we feel in the company, are we planning a longer trip, or maybe we have family problems that require flexibility. The other person (often, not always) receives these signals, sometimes consciously, more often intuitively. In a conversation about a seemingly procedural matter, something elusive is built: an understanding of organizational culture, mutual recognition of needs, informal knowledge of “how things really work here”.

When those thousands of interactions disappear, replaced by 80 automated tasks, something from the social fabric of the workplace also disappears. This is not an argument against efficiency – rather a question about its non-obvious costs. Just as the automation of production has destroyed not only jobs but entire communities built around factories, the automation of internal processes can loosen the informal bonds that make an organization more than the sum of tasks to be performed.

IBM proudly presents 99% adoption of the system among managers. This number says something important: humans actually prefer to talk to AI rather than a human. But why? Is it just a matter of convenience and speed? Or maybe, before that, these interactions with the HR department were so formalized, mechanical, and devoid of authentic contact that the algorithm became an improved version of what had also previously failed as a good example of interpersonal communication?

This leads to a disturbing conclusion: maybe we are automating not only what is routine, but what has already died as a living relationship. Maybe people in corporations have long functioned by making rewritten interaction scripts, and therefore replacing them with actual automata does not cause resistance, only relief. If so, then the problem lies not in the technology but in how we designed our workplaces even before AI came into play.

What is also fascinating is what happens to HR employees who are “freed up for strategic work”. Sounds great – instead of answering the same question a hundredth time, they can do something more ambitious. But strategies arise from people’s understanding, and that understanding is built precisely in these seemingly trivial interactions. An HR manager who has stopped talking to employees about vacations and illnesses loses access to daily signals about how the organization is functioning. He loses his orientation in nuances that do not fit into HR reports.

Let’s put to the test the thesis that organizations, like cities, need ineffective places – squares where people meet by chance, queues in which glances are exchanged, minor inconveniences that force conversation. These “losses” in the system are the places where something arises that cannot be planned: spontaneous connections, unexpected ideas, solidarity resulting from the shared experience of imperfection. IBM is showing a future where everything can work perfectly. But before we fully embrace it, it is worth considering: do we want to live in a world without friction? And can a perfect machine replace an imperfect community that – precisely because of its imperfections – remains human?

This article is part of the project “People and Algorithms in Organisations: Competences to Work in the Digital Environment” (DIGIT_NAWA), funded by the NAWA – Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej (Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange). #DIGIT_NAWA #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Management#Leadership #HumanAICollaboration #ComplementaryAI #AIStrategy #BusinessStrategy #DigitalTransformation #FutureOfWork #AIResearch #NAWA