Is AI Making Your Team More Anxious? What Leaders Can Do About It
If your team goes quiet whenever AI comes up in a meeting, you’re probably not imagining things. AI tools are arriving at work faster than the reassurance, training, and clarity people need to feel good about them, and the gap is showing up as anxiety.
The Anxiety Is Widespread
ADP’s 2026 global workforce research found that anxiety, rather than confidence, defines how most workers feel about their jobs, their futures, and AI’s role in both, with only 18% of individual contributors feeling their job was safe. The picture is similar closer to home: ADP found that only 15% of employees in Singapore felt confident about their job security. In the US, Founder Reports found that 39% of workers are at least moderately concerned that AI could reduce or eliminate their current role.
Why Leaders Should Care
Anxiety isn’t only uncomfortable. It’s costly. ADP found that workers who fear losing their jobs are more stressed, less engaged, and more likely to look for new opportunities. Founder Reports adds a quieter risk: employees who worry about AI are almost twice as likely to believe that extra effort is pointless (49% versus 27% of those with little or no concern). A team that has stopped investing discretionary effort can look perfectly fine on a dashboard.
Where Communication Is Breaking Down
Many leaders believe they’re communicating, but employees aren’t hearing it. Adecco’s 2026 report found that only 40% of leaders say they’ve clearly communicated how AI affects employees’ roles, and just 36% say their talent strategy clearly shows AI will create opportunities rather than replace workers.
The conversation is also happening in the wrong places. Workday’s August 2026 survey of 5,400 employees found that many aren’t talking to their managers about AI at all, and that between 58% and 61% of managers and leaders report concealing their own AI use, compared with 35% of individual contributors. When leaders themselves hide how they use AI, silence becomes the norm, and silence is where anxiety grows.
We see a version of this in our own digital learning work. Organizations often already have the tools. What’s missing is a way to design the experience around the realities of how people actually work.
What Leaders Can Do
1. Be specific about what’s changing, and keep saying it. Vague reassurance (“AI won’t replace you”) rarely lands. Explain which tasks AI will support, which decisions stay with people, and what it means for roles over the next year. Repeat it often, because one town hall won’t settle anyone’s nerves.
2. Invest visibly in development. ADP found that workers who felt their employers invested in their professional development were 5.3 times more likely to be confident about their long-term job stability. Employees are asking for it, too: in one AI at Work survey, 68% wanted more training opportunities and 61% wanted clear communication from leadership. Training shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all, since some people are comfortable learning on their own while others prefer guided support.
3. Make it safe to talk about AI. If managers and leaders hide their own AI use, no one else will admit theirs. Workday’s analysis suggests leaders should set the example for responsible use, so employees feel psychologically safe to disclose it. Share what you use AI for, where it failed, and where you double-check its output.
4. Involve people in redesigning their work. Adecco’s 2025 research found that employees who help redesign their work alongside AI report significantly higher trust in how their employer uses it. In our DRIVE Human-Centered Design Method, this starts with the Discover stage: empathy interviews and observing how work actually happens, then turning what you learn into “How might we…” questions. Don’t guess what your team is worried about. Ask them.
5. Teach AI through practice, with humans in charge. Give people a repeatable way to work with AI instead of leaving them to guess. A simple structure like our Role-Action-Specific Guidelines (RAS) framework helps: tell the tool what role to take, what action to perform, and what guidelines to follow. Keep human validation in the loop, because the goal is for AI to enhance human work, not replace human judgment.
The Takeaway
AI anxiety isn’t a sign that your team is resistant to change. It’s a signal that people are waiting for clarity, support, and a say in what happens next. ADP’s researchers argue that this anxiety is not inevitable and is, in large part, a leadership failure. That’s difficult to hear, but it also means leaders have real influence over the outcome.
The organizations that handle this well won’t be the ones with the most tools. They’ll be the ones that talk openly, train practically, and design AI into work with their people, not around them.
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References
Fortune. (2026, March 25). Workers are anxious, scared, and insecure about AI (ADP Research, Today at Work 2026). https://fortune.com/2026/03/25/workers-anxious-scared-insecure-ai-adp-global-survey/
People Matters. (2026). AI anxiety grips Singapore workforce as only 15% feel jobs are safe (ADP, People at Work 2026). https://sea.peoplemattersglobal.com/amp/article/ai-and-emerging-tech/ai-anxiety-grips-singapore-workforce-as-only-15percent-feel-jobs-are-safe-report-49933
Founder Reports. (2026, July). Employee Engagement Report. https://founderreports.com/?p=4190
Workday. (2026). AI Adoption Is Moving Faster Than Employee Trust. https://www.workday.com/en-us/perspectives/ai/ai-at-work-september.html
HCA Mag. (2026). Trust, not technology, will determine AI success (Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders report). https://www.hcamag.com/ca/specialization/transformation/trust-not-technology-will-determine-ai-success-report/576271
Adecco Group. (2025). Humanity at Work: How to Thrive in an AI Era (Global Workforce of the Future Report). https://info.lhh.com/us/en/2025-GWoF
Predictive Index. (2025). 68% of employees want AI training more than job guarantees. https://www.predictiveindex.com/blog/68-of-employees-want-ai-training-more-than-job-guarantees-heres-why/
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