Artificial intelligence is becoming embedded in UK workplaces while simultaneously increasing expectations around output, according to new research that also points to rising stress, extensive employee monitoring, and continued demand for hybrid working.
The 2026 State of Hybrid Work report from Owl Labs found that 86% of UK employees use or have experimented with AI at work, while 57% said the technology had increased expectations around how much they should complete during the working day.
The study is based on a nationally representative survey of 2,014 full-time UK employees and forms part of a wider international study involving more than 8,000 respondents.
AI adoption is already frequent rather than occasional for a large proportion of the workforce. Some 27% of respondents said they use AI daily, while 26% use it several times a week. Usage is higher among managers than individual contributors, at 92% and 70% respectively.
Employees also report tangible benefits. More than two-thirds, 68%, said AI had made them more productive and able to complete more tasks, while 60% believed AI skills improved their chances of promotion and 64% said the technology had increased confidence in their ability to do their job.
The productivity gains are accompanied by pressure. Alongside the 57% reporting higher expectations, 39% said they were concerned AI could make their role obsolete. More than a quarter of AI users, 26%, said they were using tools that had not been officially approved by their employer.
That level of shadow AI creates a governance problem for organisations attempting to improve productivity while retaining control over commercially sensitive information, personal data, intellectual property, and regulatory obligations.
Employers are also monitoring staff extensively. The report found that 59% of employees believe their organisation uses monitoring technology. Login and logout activity was the most commonly cited measure, at 32%, followed by meeting attendance at 22%, screen or mouse movement at 17%, and keyboard activity at 15%.
Some 82% of respondents said employers should be legally required to disclose the use of monitoring tools.
The findings sit alongside continued tension over where employees work. Six in 10 respondents said their preferred arrangement was hybrid, while 31% reported that their employer had changed its remote or hybrid policy during the previous year.
Flexibility does not translate into wholesale opposition to office attendance. Some 92% said they could be encouraged to attend more often if the right incentives were available. Higher compensation, the ability to choose office days, and help with commuting costs were among the most commonly selected incentives.
Employees nevertheless continue to attach employment value to flexibility. Removing hybrid or remote working would prompt some workers to begin looking for another position offering greater choice over when or where they work.
Frank Weishaupt, chief executive of Owl Labs, said: “The pressure that comes with these rising expectations is starting to show in our data.”
Stress and engagement figures reinforce that assessment. More than a third of respondents, 35%, said their work-related stress had increased during the previous year, while 37% described themselves as disengaged. Burnout was the most frequently cited reason for disengagement.
The survey also identified workplace behaviours reflecting how employees respond to pressure and visibility. Some 38% said they had participated in “work-to-rule”, limiting activity to tasks set out in their job description, while 30% reported deliberately choosing office days when senior leaders or clients would be present.
The latter behaviour reflects persistent concern about visibility in hybrid organisations. Physical attendance can become a signal of commitment when managers have limited confidence in assessing output remotely, even where formal policies allow flexible work.
Technology sits on both sides of the workplace equation. AI can increase individual capacity, while collaboration platforms make distributed work possible. The same environment can create more opportunities for digital monitoring and turn productivity improvements into higher workloads rather than shorter working time.
The report also found continued friction in hybrid meetings. Two in five workers experience meeting fatigue, while technical problems remain widespread. Owl Labs put the average time required to get a hybrid meeting started at 5.9 minutes, down from 6.5 minutes in the previous year’s research.
Meeting equipment received mixed assessments. Thirty-five per cent described their employer’s hybrid meeting technology as effective, while 51% regarded it as adequate rather than particularly good. More than a third wanted dedicated one-touch room systems.
Owl Labs sells hybrid-working technology, and the findings reflect employee perceptions rather than independently measured productivity or stress outcomes. The scale of the study nevertheless provides a substantial snapshot of how working practices are developing as AI use becomes routine.
The emerging tension is increasingly about how organisations translate new technological capacity into workloads, supervision, office policies, and employee experience without undermining the flexibility and productivity they are trying to preserve.
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