When AI saves your team time, decide where those hours go
One recruiter says teams that got faster with AI didn't bank the savings. They took on work they couldn't afford before, so it pays to choose that work on purpose.
What happened
Elton Chan, co-founder of Second Talent, a firm that connects tech companies with engineers across Asia, writes in Forbes that one of his clients planned to hire eight engineers. After bringing AI into its development work, the client found it could get the same work done with five, so it cut the request.
Then those five started moving faster than expected, and by June the company asked Chan's firm to hire 11. His explanation is that the company began taking on projects that had been too expensive to justify before. He says he has stopped believing companies simply bank the efficiency, and that freed capacity usually gets spent within two quarters.
This is one recruiter describing his own clients. He is upfront that it's too early to say whether AI will create more jobs than it removes.
Why it matters
Many owners worry that AI means cutting staff, or that the time it saves will quietly vanish. Chan's account points to a third outcome: the time gets absorbed by work you had been putting off.
If you don't choose that work deliberately, the loudest request of the week will choose it for you.
Chan also raises a catch in the same Forbes piece. The entry-level jobs his firm used to fill, such as regression testing, catalog data cleanup and building product pages from a spec, are now often handled by AI. Those repetitive first jobs were also how newcomers learned the business. He says some clients now give junior staff exposure to live support work earlier, or pair them more closely with senior people.
What it means for your business
- Agencies and accounting firms: List the services you've wanted to offer, like advisory work or monthly check-ins, but never had hours for. Those are the first candidates for any time AI frees up.
- Clinics: Think about the follow-up calls, reminders and recall outreach that slip when the front desk is busy. Name them now so the saved time goes there.
- Retail and trades: Consider the customers or job types you turned away because the admin wasn't worth it, such as small quotes or slow-to-answer inquiries. Faster paperwork may make them worth taking.
- Any team that trains new hires: If AI takes over the simple starter tasks, plan how a new person will learn. That could mean shadowing an experienced colleague or sitting in on real customer conversations earlier.
One thing to try this week
Before you add any AI tool, take 20 minutes to write a "someday list" of five things you'd do if you had the hours. Include the new service, the slower customer group and the follow-ups you skip.
Rank them, and put the top one next to the task you plan to speed up. Then you'll know where the saved time is going before it disappears.