Informational clarity is key to rebuilding trust among a workforce that’s laden with AI anxiety.
By Debbie Bolla
Chief Human Experience Officer KeyAnna Schmiedl kicked off Workhuman Live by telling the crowd that we’re here to move the world of work forward. So, when I had a few moments with her during the conference I had to ask her: How?
“With less information overload and more informational clarity. Answers to the questions of: ‘What do I know? When did I know it? When will I know more? I want to continue to build trust among the workforce,” she said. “How do we get the trust back so that we have a workforce that wants to do great work?”
Of course, AI adoption is having an impact on mistrust and employee concern. During a session, McKinsey research findings showed that 1 in 5 employees have anxiety around AI-related changes at work. “We need a playbook on how AI should really work in transforming organizations and how do we make sure that we keep humans apart of it? Because otherwise, what we are talking about are AI models making the decisions, which I will never be comfortable with.”
Schmiedl shared a few ways about how Workhuman approaches AI adoption and acceptance within the organization. She said they began their AI journey a few years ago by surveying the workforce and hosting hackathons. They asked employees for ideas on ways they felt the use of AI could solve problems and produce better outcomes. The feedback was analyzed by the Workhuman IQ technology team to determine if AI, automation, or even something else was the best way to eliminate the problem. The issues that fell into the AI box became a part of a hackathon to further learn how processes could be augmented through technology. And there was more surveying to gather feedback to find out about employee AI interest levels, and then training was available at the respective desired levels. The company even has an “AI Ambassador” program and an “AI Enablement” team today.
“For us this year it’s AI enablement, and it’s because we want to understand where the problems are that prevent employees from getting work done, and then we want to solve for that. AI is going to replace tasks, not jobs. But we need to be prepared to talk about what job design looks like in the future.”
And when thinking of the future and planning for it, leadership development is always a priority. “What I would say is 2026 is putting a spotlight on what it takes to be a good leader and then equipping people with the tools and the support to get it done.”
Schmiedl says that leadership development is often thought of as either too much soft skill and not enough business acumen or all business acumen and no soft skill. It must be a balance of human interaction with the needs of the business.
“This is the opportunity to say that leadership development is all about understanding the human impact on business decisions and translating it to what we want out of the business.”
