What HR needs to know about the AI grief in the workplace

Grief can show up in unexpected ways in the workplace.

Many employees are familiar with grief: 61% of working adults have experienced the death of a loved one while employed, according to a 2025 survey from the New York Life Foundation, and 91% consider coping with death as significant as getting married or having a kid.

And now, some employees are experiencing grief in response to the loss of their identity, career, and ability to provide for one’s self, according to Max Blumberg, a psychologist and change management consultant. It’s an experience known as “AI grief.”

“It’s a sense of loss that we haven’t seen before in the workplace,” Blumberg told HR Brew. “It’s a sense of everything that you’ve been working towards in your career and your career planning potentially being taken off the table and replaced by AI.”

What’s going on? Many people leaders have led workforces through periods of grief after layoffs, as employees grieve the loss of their coworkers or their jobs. But AI grief is different, Blumberg said, because the tech is making it harder for workers to find another job or continue their careers at another company.

“These people are being let go. They’re being released, and they’re not being given a path to success in any other direction. There’s fear. There’s anxiety. There’s failure,” Blythe Landry, a licensed clinical social worker and author of Trauma Intelligence: The Art of Helping in a World Filled with Pain, told HR Brew.

Their grief is compounding with heightened levels of anxiety, fear, and burnout. Employees are already exaggerating their AI use, working performatively out of fear, and burning out, leading them to be less productive and more likely to make mistakes, Landry said. And, for those who work in person, the workplace has become less of a community or safe space.

What can HR do? HR pros can help their workforces go through the Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, Blumberg said, which include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. HR can even create spaces dedicated to helping employees navigate each stage, he said, like a space where those who are depressed can share their concerns with HR, or a space where those in denial can participate in AI learning and development.

“HR needs to be part of the diagnosis of understanding how many people in the organization are affected by [AI grief] and at what stage of grief they are in,” Blumberg said.

In the face of AI transformation and associated grief, Landry said people leaders should focus on what they can control, including how they treat their employees, and be as transparent as possible.

“The biggest thing you can do when someone is grieving anything, including a whole workforce being let go, is say what’s true. This is catastrophic. This is life changing. We are afraid. We have no control,” she said. “One of the things that leaders try to shy away from is vulnerability, and truly great leaders are vulnerable.”