High Expectations, High Hurdles: A Survey with Professionals in Austrian SMEs on their GenAI Usage, Concerns, and Literacy

Professionals in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have high expectations towards GenAI technologies. They are a large and particular target user group and therefore interesting for research on (designing) GenAI technologies for the workplace due to SMEs’ typical characteristics of high agility but low resources for innovation. In this paper, we present a survey study with 37 professionals working in Austrian SMEs on their use of GenAI, their plans and concerns for future use, and their GenAI literacy. Our findings show that GenAI is used frequently, and primarily for simple tasks such as content generation and search, despite concerns about data security and professionals’ limited confidence in usage. The GenAI literacy of the participants varied and was generally low. Good design that addresses the needs of SMEs for productivity in key tasks, ease-of-use, and trustworthiness, while improving GenAI literacy and supporting long-term human learning, will be needed to fulfill expectations and facilitate effective and sustainable usage of GenAI in SMEs.