Employers and employees are having very different experiences with AI

Is AI working out well in your organization?

The majority (81%) of business leaders think AI has increased employee productivity in the past year, a recent report from BambooHR found. But it’s also caused more career instability and stress for employees, leading to “AI brain fry,” or burnout from using and overseeing AI tools, HR Brew previously reported.

This disconnect between how leaders think about AI’s impact and how workers are actually feeling it is called “dignity debt,” BambooHR CEO Brad Rencher told HR Brew. Leaders, he said, are telling employees to use AI in the name of productivity, but they’re not extending the transparency, trust, and authenticity that employees need to feel secure in their futures with these tools.

“The top down: ‘Hey, use AI, use AI,’ if that was ever effective, that time has passed,” Rencher said. “Now, it’s about enlisting people in the work…It’s time for us to redesign the work…How do we change the factory to bring the humans in, but to change how the work gets done?”

What HR can do. Many business leaders have “done a disservice in how we’ve spoken about AI,” Rencher said, by making it seem like AI is going to replace entire jobs. HR pros can help leaders restructure jobs so that AI is replacing specific tasks and responsibilities.

“A job is a collection of tasks and responsibilities that gets grouped together, and we give it a title, and I don’t think AI is going to come to replace a bunch of titles,” he said. “It’s inside the work itself. It’s a task that I may have done that I’m not going to do anymore.”

Leaders and HR pros can address employees’ concerns about the future of AI by saying, “I don’t know,” Rencher said.

“When we don’t know what exactly is going to happen, just say, ‘I don’t know’...to your company or your team. It gives them permission to feel the things that they’re feeling, and then you can have the conversation through that transparency and that trust,” Rencher said.