Used at
The Bentway
The organization
Data & spreadsheets
for Planning & analysisCross-referencing contact lists, formatting spreadsheets, compiling data for decks. Staff upload real files — including whole contact databases — and check the output by eye before using it.
The tools
ChatGPT · Gemini
The tools staff named
The system
The system understands and recommends, and a person decides what to do next.
A person decidesData flow
spreadsheets — contact lists, budgets, survey results
Operational data
whole files uploaded to a vendor chatbot
↓
compare, dedupe, reformat
Language Models
↓
a cleaned or merged sheet
Operational data
errors have been caught in review
Risks staff flagged
Errors that look finished
Staff report catching errors in the output — and cases where doing the task by hand would have been quicker. A wrong merge or figure can travel into decks, reports and decisions.
How it's managedNothing is used until a person has checked it — staff re-check what the tool returns.
Contact lists on vendor servers
Uploading a contact database sends hundreds of people’s details to a tool no one has vetted — the people listed never agreed to that.
!No safeguard in place yet
Environmental cost
Heavy file-crunching is exactly the kind of routine task whose convenience, several staff argue, does not outweigh the environmental cost — the reason some refuse AI outright.
How it's managedProposed by staff: count AI use in the Bentway’s environmental impact reports.
Who it touches
People in the spreadsheets
Caught incidentally
contacts, artists and respondents — swept in with every upload
You can
Fix a wrong record — flag errors in any AI-touched sheet
Know your data was processed — ask whether a list you are on went through an AI tool
Questions or concerns — bring them to the Sept 2 workshop
What staff told us
8 staffHow oftenIn a typical month, how often do you use AI tools for work?
323
NeverRarelyA few times a monthA few times a weekDaily
Trust in own useWhen you use AI at work, how confident are you that you’re using it appropriately?
323
Not confidentRarely sureSometimes sureMostly sureAlways sure
Time saved / weekRoughly how much time do you estimate AI saves you in a typical week?5 answered
311
NoneUnder 1 h1–3 h4–7 h7 h +
Comfort disclosingWould you feel comfortable telling a colleague or your manager that you used AI on a piece of work?
26
Would hide itProbably notIt dependsProbablyOpenly yes
Each cell is one answer choice — the deeper the colour, the more responses gave it · the pointer under the bar marks the median
What staff described Whole spreadsheets go in, to check that nothing is overlapping or missed.