With AI increasingly taking on more responsibilities in the workplace, HR leaders are tasked with implementing the technology efficiently and effectively without losing sight of the human experience.
By Simon Kent
Technology’s role in the workplace is constantly shifting. The advent of AI and related solutions means the relationship between tech and employees is on the move once again. Today’s technology doesn’t just have the ability to replace jobs, but it fundamentally changes them and the way work is communicated and carried out. As AI assumes more responsibility and requires more employees to work alongside it, is the workplace becoming less human—a place where the keyboard is king and where interpersonal relationships take a back seat?
When Nic Marks, statistician and author of “Happiness is a Serious Business,” surveyed the U.K.’s workforce, he found more than 80% report weekly frustrations with the top causes interpersonal conflicts (23%) and poor IT/admin systems (23%). The experience of IT in the workplace, he argues, isn’t a set one. Rather, it depends on the system. “Bad tech creates friction,” he says. “Slow computers, clunky processes, excessive admin that drains both energy and happiness.”
Good tech, therefore, does the reverse: It clears away pointless hassle and frees up time and attention for what really matters like connecting with colleagues and customers. Marks gives the example of Clare County Council in Ireland who won a CIPD award for a project which gave field staff tablets, cutting admin time by 30%, and freeing up more time for employees to have real conversations with residents. “Technology can distance people, or it can bring them closer. The difference is whether it creates friction or flow,” says Marks.
“There are definitely some communications advances that have made us more friendly,” says David Edwards, global head of workforce planning, Ericsson. “Video calls are infinitely more humanising than the cold medium of email, for example. I think we are drawn to different media according to the circumstance.”
Edwards believes people will always try to anthropomorphise technology and AI is easier to do this with than other technologies. “Friendly AI provides us with the mirage of companionship in a working world that is increasingly lonely,” he says. “I’m far from sure that employees will think any better of their organisations simply because they’ve installed ‘friendly’ tech. I think they will unfavourably compare and contrast machine-learned humanistic behaviours with frequently uneven or counter-intuitive ones exhibited by actual humans.”
Overriding everything, argues Edwards, is company culture and this is less about the technology itself and more about how it is used and who it impacts. “The CEO who can’t be reached on any chat application or the executive who fails to respond to the email you spent hours crafting tells you much more about a company than any amount of tech they’ve thrown at the wall,” he says.
For Thea Fineren, chief people officer at technology services business Advania, HR has a very clear role in determining how AI is adopted within the company and therefore its impact on the employee experience. “HR leaders must help their business adopt AI in a way that drives efficiency and innovation without losing sight of the human experience,” she says. “This desperately requires careful decision-making, transparent communication, and an ongoing commitment to employee development.” As Fineren notes, employees often experience uncertainty and concern around the development and use of AI. Creating “safe spaces” for open conversations about technology will help, enabling businesses to be honest and transparent, and helping to create what Fineren terms “a safe path to balanced machine and human success.”
Building trust is key to unlocking AI’s full potential, but currently this is challenging given the fear some employees experience around the technology. Employees believe AI will replace jobs, but, Fineren explains, the reality is more nuanced. “Technological advances have always led to new ways of working and AI is already being harnessed to improve the employee experience,” she says. “At Advania UK, 84% of employees use Microsoft Copilot, which reports an average daily time savings of 30 to 40 minutes.” Employees need to understand what AI can bring to them and how it makes their lives easier and better, and then they need to experience that happening.
Joris van der Gucht, founder and CEO at AI agent platform Ravical, feels the debate around AI has focussed too much on the replacement of employees instead of their empowerment. “From my perspective, the technology does not remove the human element, it changes where it sits,” he says. “For decades, professionals have spent huge amounts of time on routine administration. When AI takes that weight off, people can focus on what matters more: listening, analysing, advising, and building trust. Work becomes more human, not less.”
Joris also highlights AI’s potential as a coach for employees, placing it in what would otherwise be considered a thoroughly human role. The model here is to capture senior knowledge from across an organisation and embed it into a system accessible to junior staff. The result is the potential to learn faster and more effectively with users realising they are tapping into real world, real person knowledge and experience.
“When firms use AI agents to handle the noise of communication, surface opportunities, or capture expertise, employees do not feel less human,” Joris asserts. “They feel relieved, more focused, and able to bring judgement and empathy to the forefront. The future of work is not human or AI. It is the right partnership between the two.”
Dr. Clare Walsh, director of education at the Insitute of Analytics (IoA), believes soft skills have never been more important or desirable than now in order to work with AI. “Cross functional teaming is profoundly challenging, and workflows that were once linear with a clear start and finish will become more iterative and circular in nature,” she says. “This demands excellent working relationships.”
If anything, an increasing role of technology in the workplace serves to emphasise where and how the human element is most important. It becomes clearer how the workplace needs to be human to operate, for employees to share ideas, realise significant moments, celebrate, and move those important points forward.
“AI does not have the power to destroy the quality of the working day on its own. You have to set up the conditions to make that the outcome. It is a piece of technology that enables new ways of working, and if you choose to adopt the most limited uses, then of course it will erode the working environment. But there are ways to use this technology imaginatively to rethink how you carry out your work and enhance performance for everyone.” – Dr. Clare Walsh, director of education, Institute of Analytics
Most important is that employers should be in charge of their workplace not technology. “AI does not have the power to destroy the quality of the working day on its own,” says Dr. Walsh. “You have to set up the conditions to make that the outcome. It is a piece of technology that enables new ways of working, and if you choose to adopt the most limited uses, then of course it will erode the working environment. But there are ways to use this technology imaginatively to rethink how you carry out your work and enhance performance for everyone.”
