Building Resilience Amid Workplace Change

Norah Larke sees an opportunity for Wintrust Financial Corporation to prepare thoughtfully for AI before its effects reach the broader workforce. Larke, the company’s EVP and chief HR officer, began by building a risk framework and governance structure to guide the technology’s adoption.

With a workforce that has already navigated years of change and growth through mergers and acquisitions, Larke has focused on getting the organization ready for what comes next. “We know it’s coming and it’s coming like a freight train,” she said. “So we’re just trying to get ready,” she said during an executive panel discussion about navigating change fatigue at From Day One’s Chicago HR conference. 

The four panelists, in a conversation moderated by Kim Quillen, business editor at the Chicago Tribune, explored how people leaders can keep teams grounded as AI adoption adds another layer of change to the workplace.

Living Inside Constant Change

What sets this moment apart is the missing finish line, says Laura Cheesewright, global principal consultant at Unmind. Organizations once managed people from point A to point B. Now there is no point B, and employees are asked to keep working through change without knowing where it leads. “There’s a tremendous amount of ambiguity around what the future of work is going to look like,” Cheesewright said.

The psychological impact is outpacing the operational impact across Unmind’s client base. Anxiety and burnout are up, and people are struggling to stay connected to purpose and meaning, says Cheesewright. 

Cheesewright describes burnout as “a chronic imbalance between job demand and job support.” Demand keeps climbing, and much of that pressure can’t be removed, so she encourages organizations to raise the support side of the equation.

Leading Without All the Answers

Employees often look to their leaders for answers, and this time leaders won’t have them all. “This is truly a leadership moment, and leadership capability is going to become crucial,” she said. The skills she expects leaders to need most are “clarity, transparency, communication, and the ability to just build confidence in people.”

Candor is part of that confidence. Cheesewright says the most trustworthy thing a leader can do is sometimes say they don’t know. Leaders can still offer certainty about processes when they can’t guarantee outcomes. Resilience is “the ability to stay connected to your capabilities when you’re under pressure,” she said.

David Loiselle, managing partner at the Leadership Pipeline Institute, encourages organizations to change the question they ask leaders about AI. “The question should start with how are you enabling your team to do their work with these tools and changes,” he said. Faster tools make an old trap more tempting, he says: leaders stepping down to do their team’s work.

Austin Mace, VP, and change catalyst at Dentsu, works within teams like a player-coach. “There’s a big difference between mandating and educating folks on how to use these tools,” Mace said. His group shadows employees on the job and shows them where AI can lift tasks off their plates. “I really don’t think it’s an efficiency conversation,” he said. “It’s a new capability.”

Hiring for Human Skills

Quillen then turned to talent acquisition and what employers should look for now. Wintrust is working toward a skills-based hiring framework, a multi-year effort that Larke wants to accelerate as AI reshapes jobs. Culture fit will stay in the equation, she says, because the community-based organization needs people who live its values.

Which skills matter is the harder question. “I think it’s human skills,” Loiselle said. The question is personal for him, with a 5-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter growing up alongside AI. He lists learning agility, judgment, decision-making, and curiosity, and rejects the idea that AI allows companies to hire only generalists. “The specialist is more important today than ever because they’re the ones that hold judgment,” he said.

Mace tested that thinking this summer when he hired four interns. Some applicants knew programming languages and how to build agentic systems, he says, but what really impressed him was how candidates carried themselves in interviews and where curiosity had taken them outside the classroom.

AI is also reshaping both candidate selection and the hiring process. With applicants using AI to strengthen their applications and employers using it to evaluate candidates, one-on-one conversations are becoming increasingly important for getting to know candidates beyond what their applications reveal.

Larke also sees an opening for current employees. “This is probably a huge opportunity for internal mobility,” she said. Employers know far more about their own people than about outside applicants, yet often second-guess insiders and gamble on outsiders. “Look at the data you have internally and make the decision there,” said Loiselle. “Your predictability is much better.”

Spending on Tools, Not People

At a time when budgets are tight and companies are investing more in technology, investing in the people expected to use it is just as important. Without the right support and training, even the most advanced tools may fall short of their potential.

“I almost think we’re over-investing in the tools at the moment and under-investing in the people that need to use those tools,” said Cheesewright. 

Returns are lagging as well. Only 37% of respondents say AI has contributed to their organization's Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT), according to McKinsey's 2026 survey on the state of AI. Loiselle sees the gap as a sign that executives need to explain why the organization is using AI, whether for better customer service or faster turnaround.

Asked who owns the return on AI, Loiselle separates responsibility from accountability. Accountability for a business decision probably rolls to the top, he says. Responsibility differs at each level, and the people using the tools probably drive the value in the end.

Make Change Less Scary

Asked how well-being strategies can keep people engaged and away from burnout, Mace says his team deliberately gives employees room to step away from daily work and learn the tools, often at in-person “makeathons” built on fun and community.

Quillen closed by asking each panelist for one practice that protects productivity during rapid change. Mace recommends a workplace that’s safe for failure and experimentation. 

Cheesewright advises leaders to “create certainty where you can” by spelling out the process and exactly what they're asking people to do. “It’ll ground people,” she said.

Larke’s answer was to simplify. “One of the things that’s really important when it comes to change is to make it less scary,” she said. “Don’t try to teach everything at once.”

Loiselle translated simplicity into a single action: “put the right work with the right people.” When work lands with whoever grabs it first, he says, everyone else is left wondering what their role is. “Don’t let the work get absorbed by people just for the sake of speed,” he said.

Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.

(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)