The AI Work Redesign Playbook

About the Project    

The actual impact of an AI tool depends on how it is designed and implemented, but frontline workers often have little say in those decisions. AI can conceivably improve work by reducing low-value tasks and streamlining operations, so that employees can concentrate on the work they find most meaningful. 

Those changes could benefit many workers who feel overloaded, burned out, and tempted to quit the jobs that they have trained for and on which their families rely. Of course, AI can also degrade job quality by amplifying productivity pressures and worries about job security. Those concerns often prompt AI resistance and avoidance—leading to failed AI pilots and limited worker investment in developing their AI skills. 

To address these challenges, a research team based in the Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER) at the MIT Sloan School of Management will test and iterate concrete strategies for integrating frontline workers’ voices and insights into the development and deployment of AI. In Phase 1 and 2 of this project, we will test these frameworks in health care jobs such as medical coders, respiratory technicians, billing staff, medical assistants, and more. 

These pilots will be codesigned, implemented, and evaluated in partnership with the health system we are working with and the union representing many of those workers. We hypothesize that these engagement strategies will support more complete implementation of AI tools and greater development of AI skills, while reducing overload, burnout, and turnover, both in this health care setting and beyond.  We hypothesize that frontline engagement will improve work for all employees; consistent with some of our past research, we expect benefits will be even stronger for women and those with family caregiving responsibilities.

In Phase 3, lessons from the health care pilots will be integrated with insights from research and cases in other industries and from our expert advisors from MIT and across sectors. We will prepare and disseminate a Playbook offering concrete, tactical guidance on how to effectively and efficiently learn from and engage with frontline workers when designing and implementing AI solutions.

Research Partners

We are pleased to be working with UMass Memorial Health and the SHARE AFSCME union on this project. 

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