AI’s Hidden Risk: What Will You Do With the Time It Saves?

By Brent Hafele, president & CEO performance architect at Vibrancy Unlocked, a WBA Bronze Associate Member

What if the biggest risk of AI is not adopting it too slowly?

What if the bigger risk is what happens after it starts working?

Across banking, leaders are exploring how AI can save time, streamline work, and improve efficiency. The gains are real. Yet if AI creates hundreds of hours of additional capacity over the next few years, there is an important question almost no one is asking:

What should leaders and employees do with the time they get back?

That question kept coming to mind while attending Ben Udell’s AI Masterclass at the recent WBA BOLT Summer Leadership Summit.

Udell did an excellent job helping bankers understand practical applications of AI and how it can improve productivity, communication, critical thinking, and efficiency. The session reinforced something many leaders already know: AI is no longer a future technology. It is a present opportunity.

But efficiency alone is not the finish line.

Email made communication faster. The internet made information easier to access. Mobile phones made us constantly reachable. Automation reduced countless manual tasks.

Yet many leaders would struggle to argue that work has become less stressful, less demanding, or less overwhelming.

In many cases, the time we saved simply became filled with more work — more emails, more meetings, more requests, more expectations, and more noise.

Without intentionality, AI may follow the same path.

That is the hidden risk.

The danger is not merely that banks fail to use AI. The greater risk is that banks use AI successfully, create meaningful new capacity, and then unintentionally convert that capacity into more activity rather than more value.

Research on time poverty suggests this is not a harmless outcome. Feeling pressed for time has been associated with lower well-being, poorer health, increased stress, reduced creativity, and lower relationship quality. Other research on goal conflict found that when people experience competing demands, stress and anxiety increase, which makes them feel even more time-constrained.

In other words, more efficiency does not automatically create more breathing room. Without intentionality, it may create room for more pressure.

This is why leaders need to think beyond AI adoption and begin asking how they will invest the time AI creates.

I have begun referring to this opportunity as The Capacity Dividend™.

The Capacity Dividend is the time, attention, and organizational capacity created when efficiencies — such as AI, automation, delegation, or better systems — reduce the effort required to complete work.

For CEOs and executive leaders, their capacity dividend may be particularly valuable because some of the most important work they do — thinking, discerning, coaching, building relationships, developing successors, and shaping the future of the organization — rarely feels urgent, even though it is essential.

The question is not whether AI can create this window; the question is whether leaders will use it intentionally.

For some leaders, that time may need to become strategic thinking.

For others, it may become reflection, prayer, planning, relationship building, customer conversations, professional development, coaching, mentoring, succession planning, or innovation.

For some, the highest-value use may be rest.

That should not be dismissed.

Professional athletes do not perform at their best by ignoring recovery. Executives, managers, lenders, operations leaders, and frontline employees are no different. A tired leader making rushed decisions is not a strategic advantage.

The same principle applies to employees.

If AI helps employees complete work more efficiently, leaders should not automatically assume that every saved minute should be converted into more tasks. Some of that capacity may need to be reinvested into learning, collaboration, problem-solving, customer care, or the kind of human interaction that strengthens culture and engagement.

A Harvard Business Review article on generative AI and work fulfillment reported that employees who used AI for certain professional development and focus-work tasks experienced higher joy and effectiveness. The article also noted that many employees reinvested saved time into more enjoyable work such as problem-solving, interpersonal interaction, and learning.

That matters.

Because the better question is not simply, “How much time did AI save?”

The better question is, “What did that saved time make possible?”

Bankers should be asking:

How much time are we saving?
Where is that time going?
Is it reducing pressure or increasing expectations?
Is it improving customer experience?
Is it strengthening employee development?
Is it giving leaders more time to think, coach, and lead?
Is it giving CEOs more time to focus on strategy, succession, culture, and stakeholder relationships?
Is it helping people do more meaningful work?
Or is it simply creating a faster version of the same exhaustion?
AI may become one of the most powerful productivity tools banks have ever used. But productivity alone has never been the goal.

The goal is stronger banks, better leadership, healthier teams, more engaged employees, better customer service, and stronger communities.

That will not happen automatically.

Technology can create capacity. Leadership must decide how to invest it.

AI helped me write this article.

With the time it saved, I took my dogs for a walk.

The technology created the capacity.

Choosing how to invest it was still my job.

 

References
Engeler, I., Stan, A., Trupia, M. G., Bernardino, A., & Quoidbach, J. (2025). What do you do with the time saved by generative AI tools? Many waste it, managers included. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5127094

Etkin, J., Evangelidis, I., & Aaker, J. (2015). Pressed for time? Goal conflict shapes how time is perceived, spent, and valued. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(3), 394–406.

Giurge, L. M., Whillans, A. V., & West, C. (2020). Why time poverty matters for individuals, organisations and nations. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(10), 993–1003.

Lovich, D., Sargeant, R., & Smith, J. (June 2024). How Gen AI Can Make Work More Fulfilling. Harvard Business Review.