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So Focused on AI, Companies Are Neglecting Their People

If there is anything that can unite the U.S. in these divided times, it’s the fear and loathing of AI. Concerns about its impact on jobs, the environment, and even our ability to think has been described as “America’s new consensus” and “the most bipartisan issue since beer.”While AI affects everyone, workers feel particularly concerned–and employers need to respond to this darkening mood. In a new poll from Pew Research, 71% of adults think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the U.S. over the next two decades. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report includes some figures about emotions felt by workers today. They’re grim. It says that negative emotions—more specifically: stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness—are felt less frequently than they were in the thick of Covid, but more frequently than before 2020.A primary cause, researchers say, is the seeming gap between corporate bullishness about AI vs. the advancement of their workers. U.S. companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into AI, and one would be hard-pressed to name a major company that hasn’t made a public commitment to using AI. For some, these moves are genuinely strategic, for others, a matter of keeping up with the Dow Joneses.Yet for all its shiny, head-spinning advancements, organizations have little to show in the way of results (thus far). While it may help an individual do their job faster or more efficiently, even the Gallup report cites a survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research of executives in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia, which found that 89% of executives report that AI has had no meaningful impact on company productivity in the last three years.The great promise of AI is its ability to activate a company’s booster rockets, and executives have invested accordingly. Until those results are realized, AI is going to be a priority. But as companies race to operationalize AI and have something to show for their investment, have leaders become so focused on new technologies that they’ve forgotten the people in all of it?The Danger of the Bottom-Line MentalityAmerican business has periodically gone through peak periods of bottom-line mentality–and the current AI boom is a prime example. Rebecca Greenbaum, professor of HR management at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, calls this mentality, in which a single, narrow goal is pursued to the exclusion of everything else. “It’s a cognitive mindset that people slip into when they’re under threat,” she told From Day One, which means that people are often unaware that they’ve fallen into the pattern. That threat, she says, is uncertainty.In the case of the executives hyper fixated on AI, the uncertainty is whether their investment will provide a return, whether their competitors best them, or whether their boards of directors will lose patience.Emotions are contagious, particularly ones like anxiety, so when leaders become anxious about where the company is headed, workers will do the same, and “it starts to feel less like a team and more like we’re all on our own,” Greenbaum said. Soon it becomes all about survival.While it’s not exactly a zero-sum game, having priorities means some things get more attention than others. “Our lens has gotten narrow. It’s about moving faster and more aggressively,” said Dan Kwong, the EVP of people at Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey. “But we’re forgetting about the people and the relationships that actually are the root of many things.”Ways to Heal the Negative VibePeople feel negative emotions in response to a discrepancy between what we expect and what we get. “We’re very loss-sensitive,” said Denise Rousseau, professor of organizational behavior and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. If an employee takes a job at a company where hard work is rewarded with job security, but then watches the leadership team salivate over technology famous for its ability to do human jobs at a fraction of the cost, it will inevitably produce negative feelings like sadness and anger.In general, an organization distracted by operationalizing the latest anything may not be extending a lot of support to its employees. “We’re in an era in which what’s being committed to employees is relatively low,” Rousseau said. Basic needs like job security and job prospects aren’t being met, and “precarity is a negative-emotion generator.”The only way to address it is to heal the breach, she said. So, if someone joins a company with the knowledge that high performers get promotions, but promotions go away, then what will be offered instead? The company might provide skills training that the employee wants or coaching for the career they imagine down the road. “Resources heal violations because they offset or substitute what people lost,” said Rousseau. Another key remedy for negative emotions is simply “fair treatment and following procedures.”While anger and sadness are typically individual emotions, anxiety is shared. “Our emotions are amplified by our surroundings,” Rousseau said. That goes for a feeling like enthusiasm just as much as it does for stress. “The most important people for emotional contagion are friends. The second most important are advice-givers, like your boss or someone you really respect,” she pointed out.The best remedy for anxiety is openness and communication, but rather than admitting uncertainty, most leaders will simply clam up, giving up as little information as possible and opening ample room for nervous speculation. Candor is almost always a better solution. If you’re not sure whether promotions will be available or if there will be layoffs, say so. Then offer to heal the breach.You might say, “as long as you stay here, we can give you retention bonuses,” Rousseau said. “Stay for one month, stay for three months, stay for a year, and we will make it worth your while. That way people don’t feel shortchanged by their precarity. I’ll stay here because it benefits me in the short term.”Loneliness is an individual feeling typically felt in a social setting, and it’s often about a lack of belonging. Lisa Sánchez, who leads human resources at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, believes that as soon as the notions of diversity, equity, and inclusion came under attack, workplace culture took a dive.“The truth is those things matter to the culture,” Sánchez said. “Those are all deeply rooted in people’s experiences. The problem is that organizations have treated them as programs or quotas or giving people a handout, but that’s not what that is.” She told From Day One that if leaders can treat these things as values to be lived by rather than programs to be discontinued, “we’ll see that it’s not about quotas, it’s not about a handout, it’s about doing the right thing.”Loneliness is not only a physical state, and calling everyone back into the office won’t solve the problem. Still, for teams that must work in person, it can be designed to help.Relationships are built in small groups, said Stacey Olson, the global wellness leader at design firm Gensler. People can bond more easily and take bigger risks in small groups, especially when it comes to learning new things. “Nobody wants to be in a group of 100 to raise their hand and say, ‘I can’t find the button,’” she said. If you can quietly turn to the coworker next to you, you can ask in safety.“That builds camaraderie and trust,” she said. “Then you start to have friends at work. When you have friends at work, you’re excited to be there. You go to lunch, you wind up building play into your day, and all of those help you reduce stress.”Don’t Forget the ManagersManagers are shouldering heavy loads these days. Too much, many would argue. The role has expanded so widely that managers must now be coaches, therapists, operational experts, AI evangelists, and individual contributors at once. Not surprisingly, the role of manager is now an unpopular one.Such disproportionate responsibility is a major contributor to poor workforce engagement. According to the Gallup report, low manager engagement accounts for most of the downturn in overall workforce engagement. But you need managers to be engaged, especially if you’re trying to operationalize AI. In their report, Gallup also points out that managers key to winning over the workforce when it comes to AI adoption.“In these stressful times, the quality of management is getting worse,” said Rousseau. “They’re also feeling precarious, they’re also feeling pressed for results, they’re also uncertain. Managers  who are depressed or angry are really bad problem solvers, and they’re really not good at [caring for their teams].”Simply, companies can extend some care and recognition to their people, she said. And because they’re expected to extend it, perhaps managers should be the first in line to receive.Finding Your People in the AI of It AllFor the last decade, companies have struggled to recognize the value of the employee, Rousseau said. “The focus is much more on short-term impact because investors respond to it, because the market sees it, and, often, because that is what executives are rewarded for.”But people are running out of emotional energy, Kwong told From Day One. “Whatever’s happening in the world—the economy, politics, communities—it’s a lot,” and it’s seeping into the workplace.What does it take for a worker to feel like their company really supports them? When an employee offers feedback, listen and act. Heal the breach between expectation and reality. When the company isn’t able to offer one thing, go out of the way to offer something comparable.Knowing whether your own employees are angry, sad, stressed, or lonely isn’t as simple as asking them. Admitting that you’re angry at the company is often a quick way to jeopardize one’s job. But there will be signs, though. Kwong said that he finds it in patterns like more frequent worker disagreements and increased requests for leaves of absence.If leaders really want employees to be honest with how they’re feeling, they have to go first. “There’s something to be said when leaders are vulnerable and they say, ‘I’m having a tough day, I’m overwhelmed,’” Kwong said. You could say, “I’m going to try my best. It may not come out right. I might use the wrong tone or appear frustrated. Give me a little bit of space. I’ll get back to a good place, but it’s just where I am today.”Being so honest is unnerving for most, he continued, “but it signals a really important cultural thing, that as a leader, I don’t just say that we care about well-being and mental health and transparency and open communication. I actually do it.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.(Photo by gorodenkoff/iStock)