Can AI actually help ease everyday work chores?

OVER the past year, every conversation with business leaders in the UAE and across the region has revolved around: how to adopt AI to enhance employee productivity, accelerate business growth, and deliver impact.

There’s been a sense of urgency – of not wanting to be left behind in this new era of intelligent work. However, more recently, the nature of these conversations has begun to shift.

The question is no longer just how do we adopt AI, but how do we keep up with the accelerating pace of work? As organizations, we’ve optimized for productivity, but at the cost of clarity, creativity, and connection.

This is where the idea of the ‘Frontier Firm’ comes in, rethinking how work is done, time is used, and decisions are made to drive performance while respecting human capacity.

What the data tells us

According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index Special Report: Breaking Down the Infinite Workday, the reality facing today’s workforce is both sobering and revealing – workers are more connected than ever before, but also more fragmented and fatigued.

Nearly half of employees (48 per cent) and more than half of business leaders (52 per cent) say their work feels chaotic and disjointed.

Much of this stems from the sheer volume of communication: the average worker receives 117 e-mails daily. These numbers are rising, with global messages per person up 6 per cent year over year, and significantly higher in fast-moving regions like Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where message volume has jumped more than 20 per cent.

This always-on communication culture is eroding the boundaries of the workday: by 6am, 40 per cent of people online are already scanning e-mails. By 10pm, 29 per cent are back in their inboxes. The average employee now sends or receives more than 50 messages outside of core business hours.

Even weekends are no longer sacred, with nearly 20 per cent of employees checking e-mails before noon on Saturdays and Sundays. This constant flow of notifications and late-night calls has created a culture of reaction rather than reflection. Meetings, too, have become a major driver of workplace fragmentation.

Half of them take place between 9am–11am and 1pm– 3pm, squeezing prime focus hours into a narrow band of availability. Alarmingly, 60 per cent of meetings today are unscheduled, with 57 per cent occurring without a calendar invite, and one in 10 scheduled last minute.

These patterns underscore a deeper issue: the current way we work is unsustainable. Despite our best intentions, and the promise of smarter tools, the structure of work remains largely unchanged. This is why ‘Frontier Firms’ are so important – they represent a reset, a chance to build something better.

Becoming a ‘frontier firm’

Frontier firms don’t just CHINA, with its investments, products, technology, and innovation focused on solar and wind farms in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as on electricity networks and services, stands out as a driving force for the region’s shift toward energy less reliant on fossil fuels and increasingly cleaner and greener. Between 2010 and 2024, China invested US$33.69 billion in renewables in the region, with 70 transactions for as many projects, 54 of which were in non-hydroelectric energy, totaling US$13.138 billion.

These figures alone “highlight China’s importance in supporting the region’s energy transition, both through investments and infrastructure projects,” Enrique Dussel Peters, coordinator of the Latin America and the Caribbean Academic Network on China (RedALCChina), told IPS from Mexico City.

“For China, Latin America as a whole is a market that geographically presents many opportunities; first, due to the availability of natural resources, which include critical minerals, and features such as access to water and natural and renewable energy sources”: Ana Lía Rojas.

Beyond money, China “has the capacity to develop technology, implement it, and scale it at the required speed,” said Ana Lia Rojas, executive director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage (Acera).

In a dialogue with IPS in Santiago, Chile, Rojas cited American economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a United Nations advisor, who has argued that, in short, “the energy transition is Chinese.” Sachs views China as a “leader in key technologies that will be essential over the next 25 years: photovoltaics, wind, modular nuclear, long-distance energy transmission, 5G (now 5.5G), batteries, electric vehicles, and others.”

The movement toward Latin America has been relentless. While there were no Chinese investments in renewable energy in the region between 2000 and 2009, eight emerged from 2010 to 2014, totaling US$3.298 billion and generating 6,000 jobs, according to RedALC’s Investment Monitor.

Between 2015 and 2019, 25 projects with Chinese financing materialized, totaling US$19.568 billion and creating 9,300 jobs. In the 2020- 2024 period, 37 transactions were completed, amounting to US$10.824 billion and generating 15,000 jobs. Investment volumes dipped in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, a revealing contrast emerged: 35 of the 37 renewable energy transactions during this five-year period went to nonhydroelectric projects. The Lagoinha Solar Complex, inaugurated in July this year and owned by the Brazilian subsidiary of Chinese group CGN.

Spanning 304 hectares in Ceará state, northeastern Brazil, it features 337,000 panels that will provide electricity to 240,000 households. Credit: Government of Ceará The Lagoinha Solar Complex, inaugurated in July this year and owned by the Brazilian subsidiary of Chinese group CGN.

Spanning 304 hectares in Ceará state, northeastern Brazil, it features 337,000 panels that will provide electricity to 240,000 households. Credit: Government of Ceará Interests and challenges converge.

The International Energy Agency (IEA, representing major industrialized consumers) reports a “soaring increase in Chinese clean energy investments globally, particularly in renewables,” surpassing US$625 billion in 2024—nearly double 2015 levels and accounting for 30% of the world’s total, cementing China’s leadership.

Traditionally dominated by state-owned enterprises backed by public funding, China’s energy investment landscape is shifting, with the government increasingly encouraging private sector participation.

Meanwhile, Latin America and the Caribbean saw roughly US$70 billion invested in renewables from 2015 to 2024, of which over US$30.3 billion (43%) came from China, according to the IEA.

Yet the agency notes that despite steady growth in renewable investments, the region represents just 5% of global privately funded clean energy investment—a reflection of high interest rates, scarce long-term financing, and costly public debt.

This highlights the intersection between the region’s needs and challenges and what Dussel Peters describes as China’s strategic focus on technological development and disruptive innovations, from nanomanufacturing to aerospace, including new energy sources.

Chinese investment in renewables “delivers multiple benefits by advancing energy sustainability, supporting the transition to a low-carbon grid, providing critical technology, and creating skilled jobs,” Chilean academic Rodrigo Cáceres told IPS in Santiago.

A researcher at Diego Portales University’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, Cáceres observes China’s “sustained commitment” in areas like energy storage, smart grids, and green hydrogen, framing the China-Latin America relationship as “strategic and long-term.” A key factor enabling this enduring partnership is the vast territorial, demographic, and resource potential Latin America and the Caribbean offers China.

“If we look at the per capita income we have in the region and compare it with China’s, we have more or less the same. But Latin America has half the population of China and twice the territory of China,” observed Rojas.

Twice the territory “means that projects can be deployed differently than in the rest of the world,” noted the director of Acera. According to Rojas, “it is evident that, for China, Latin America as a whole is a market that geographically presents many opportunities; first, due to the availability of natural resources, which include critical minerals, and features such as access to water and natural and renewable energy sources.”

“Second, because it is clearly a less densely populated region, which provides a certain degree of flexibility or freedom to develop projects in the territory that will aid the energy transition, not only for local or national economies but for the world,” she said. Inter Press Service adopt AI—they redesign work around it.

They use AI to cut noise, focus on what matters, and free up time for meaningful work. It’s not about doing more, but doing better—amplifying human potential, not overwhelming it.

We are already seeing pioneering organizations across the UAE embrace this shift. Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD), for example, deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot as a digital assistant to help its workforce to streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and modernize internal processes; ultimately saving 39,000 hours annually and freeing employees to focus on delivering greater customer value.

Similarly, Majid Al Futtaim is using AI to reinvent how operational data is translated into action. The retail and lifestyle conglomerate is leveraging Azure OpenAI Service alongside Power BI and Power Apps to streamline reporting, reduce feedback cycles from seven days to just three hours, and achieve $1 million in annual savings.

Meanwhile, DEWA significantly improved internal efficiency by using Microsoft 365 Copilot to cut task completion time from days to hours – all while maintaining a 98 per cent customer happiness rate. Frontier firms go beyond adopting AI—they reinvent how work is done, value is created, and people thrive.

In the UAE and the region, bold investments in AI give us a chance to lead this shift. As such, we’re committed to helping organizations pair innovation with a people-first minds.

• The writer is Specialist Team Unit Lead, Microsoft UAE.