How AI Can Make Working Life Better, Not Just More Efficient

When we talk about the transformation AI can bring to industries like accounting and finance, most of the conversation centres around productivity, efficiency, and ROI — as it probably should. In one sense, that’s understandable – businesses are right to think about the bottom line and improving the processes that influence it. But to reduce our thinking on AI to numbers alone is to miss a significant part of its potential impact – namely, the way it influences employees’ working lives. After all, employee satisfaction and productivity are intrinsically linked.

On this question too, though, there’s a stereotypical line – that AI is destined to simply replace or reduce human work, leaving accountants and finance teams fighting for a dwindling share of the labour market. But in actual fact, our research points to a different, much more encouraging, reality. And right at the outset, let me say that our philosophy as a company is ‘by accountants, for accountants’ – we’ve been there in the month-end trenches and we want what’s best for the people in this industry. –To this point, what we’ve actually seen is that AI could be the rare innovation that boosts both company productivity and employee wellbeing.

AI that fights burnout and improves satisfaction

FloQast’s new global AI survey reveals that accountants collaborating with AI are not just more efficient, they’re also happier and healthier. 52% of ‘AI collaborators’ – those who actively work with AI in intentional ways to achieve specific tasks and deliverables – say they feel well-rested, compared to only 18% of non-users. Accountants collaborating closely with AI report a 38-point boost in work-life balance and are 56% more likely to have time to complete their work.

Likewise, we’ve found that intentional AI use reduces burnout by 24% across after more than a year of usage. When scored on a ‘burnout scale’ from one to 100, AI collaborators registered only 17.5 compared to non-AI-users on 21.6 – a further indication that AI can protect, not pressure, the workforce.

On top of those figures, accountants and CFOs who collaborate with AI are also more likely to say they have the chance to be proactive, feel more engaged, and have a valuable voice in their roles. They are almost twice as likely to make choices that impact their organisation’s performance and make suggestions for achieving strategic objectives – overall, they’re more likely to say they’re involved and listened to in conversations about strategic direction.

This is a powerful combination – reduced stress, improved rest, and more rewarding, high-level work. The responses point to a validation of the hopes many have voiced that AI will reduce repetitive grunt work and enable accountants to step into more strategic roles, using next-level automation to get a deeper, more predictive view of company or client finances that feed into more intelligent decision-making.

This is clearly good news, not just for the employees but for their employers, too – it’s a virtuous cycle. Earlier research showed that companies that improve their employees’ job satisfaction and work-life balance usually see better performance, which in turn supports growth.

A major opportunity

There is, however, a catch. Despite the positive picture coming from AI collaborators, most finance leaders still haven’t defined how to bring AI meaningfully into their teams’ day-to-day work, and only 5–6% of CFOs have a clear vision for AI integration. Likewise, only one in five CFOs say they’re confident in choosing the right AI tools for their business. At this stage, then, it seems leadership vision, not technology, is now the biggest barrier to progress. Those numbers are strikingly low. But that’s not a negative thing – it means the vast majority of the industry has a real opportunity ahead to access the benefits we’re seeing in AI collaboration.

And while it’s fair to say there’s a long way to go before most accountants are collaborating with AI in a genuinely valuable way, that doesn’t mean AI is completely unfamiliar territory. In fact, 76% of respondents told us they have used AI at work. At a basic level, AI is already embedded across the profession. But the crucial distinction lies in how it’s being used. The idea of ‘using’ AI can refer to anything from drafting an email with a chatbot to uploading data into an unsanctioned generative tool and asking for a summary.

Within this 76%, less than 10% say AI has become integral to their day-to-day work. Moving from surface-level usage to meaningful collaboration requires a fundamentally different mindset. It demands clarity on what AI is being asked to achieve and a deliberate, structured approach to integrating it. When done well, AI shouldn’t just change the way work is performed; it should make that work materially more efficient.

Where leaders can start

So how do we get from where we are, with CFOs lacking a clear AI plan, to the point where most accountants are benefitting from it? There are a few high-impact actions all leaders can take as a starting point.

First off, it might sound obvious, but setting a clear AI strategy is key. Businesses need to avoid simply diving in headfirst without considering what they’re trying to achieve, identifying the real needs AI can help to meet, and establishing a clear sense of ownership and buy-in across the company. Put simply, just paying for some AI-enabled technology won’t bring real benefits. Employees will only see the results when AI is being used deliberately and intelligently.

On the other hand, though, it’s also important to grow a culture that rewards experimentation. People need to know that they have permission to try new things with AI, so they can discover the best use cases and collaboration methods. If every new workflow proposal has to go through multiple rounds of approvals, significant change won’t happen.

Finally, it’s important to redefine what ‘collaboration’ with AI means – it’s essential to embed AI directly into accounting workflows as an active contributor, not a standalone tool. Doing so means giving teams clarity on who owns the technology, what it’s designed to achieve, how it operates, and how its objectives should evolve.

Taken together, these actions can turn AI from a buzzword into a daily reality – and, if the data is anything to go by, a wellbeing multiplier.