# How workers are unlocking new ways of working

An analysis of 1.5 million work-related messages found cross-occupation tasks increased from 13.1% of occupation-specific activity in April to 25.9% in July 2026.

- Workers prompt differently outside their domain, writing shorter prompts and asking for fewer explanations while providing more examples and background.
- Customer discussions (54%) and promotional writing (44%) had the highest month-to-month return rates among cross-occupation tasks, versus 15% for financial explanations.
- Workers returned to a cross-occupation task used in the prior month 23.6% of the time, compared to 8.4% among peers with no previous-month use.
- The dataset tracked roughly 6,200 ChatGPT Business users whose occupations were identified during onboarding.

## Why it matters

Organizations adopting AI can structure workflows knowing employees regularly use AI to handle tasks outside their formal job descriptions rather than treating crossover use as one-off experimentation.

## Sources

- [OpenAI: How workers are unlocking new ways of working](https://openai.com/index/unlocking-new-ways-of-working)

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Summarized by dstilled on 2026-09-16. https://dstilled.ai/story/0210f9cc-dd9b-4f8c-a2dd-5fe3d8c2f04f