Russians spend a significant share of their working time on routine processes

Russians spend a significant share of their working time on routine processes and would like to transfer them to artificial intelligence, shows a joint survey by ITFB Group and hh.ru, in which more than 2 thousand people took part. As follows from the respondents’ answers, 39% of respondents believe that routine takes up two out of eight working hours a day. Another 37% spend up to four hours a day on their routine, and 14% spend up to six. Respondents consider the most routine tasks related to bureaucracy (55%) and reporting (36%). For 30% of respondents, the routine is translating documents into electronic form, for 25% – printing documents, for 24% – accounting and calculations. Women were slightly more likely than men to report routine tasks (40% versus 35%), which, however, may be explained by the fact that women are more likely to occupy low-paying white-collar jobs.

However, among the respondents there were many (45%) who are accustomed to routine tasks and treat them normally, if there are few of them. More than 15% of Russians complain of burnout from such tasks, and 14% begin to make mistakes in their work. The majority (57%) are willing to spend the time freed from performing routine tasks on studying; another 42% would be willing to focus on the remaining work tasks. In reality, only 16% of respondents use certain automation services at work. Most of these were among Krasnodar residents (25%), in second place were Rostov residents (20%), and in third place were Nizhny Novgorod residents (19%).

It should be noted that although the implementation of solutions for automating work tasks based on AI may be quite in demand in many workplaces, it can be assumed that respondents overestimate the volume of routine tasks that they perform. Thus, a study published in 2022 by the Center for Labor Research of the Higher School of Economics showed that the routine index (from minus 1, if the profession does not require performing any routine tasks, to plus 1, if the work is limited only to them) for the Russian labor market as a whole is low – on it, in 74% of professions the share of routine tasks does not even reach 50%, and in only 17% it is 70% or higher. In the sectoral context, the integral index of routineness reaches its maximum in processing and transport, it is minimal in education and finance (see “Kommersant” dated July 27, 2022).

Anastasia Manuilova