People feeling threatened by AI may engage in psychological warfare, leading to less innovation, lower morale and higher turnover
When artificial intelligence (AI) enters the workplace, it brings both promise and anxiety. Recent research and expert insights reveal that employees often react to AI and automation with job insecurity, leading to behaviours that can undermine collaboration and innovation.
Ann Schlotzhauer, assistant professor of psychological science at Missouri University of Science and Technology, has studied how job insecurity shapes workplace behaviour, and says it is rarely a good thing, not just for employees but for retention and productivity.
Plus, the rapid pace of technological change and the increasing use of AI and automation are intensifying employee job insecurity, making the issue a pressing concern for HR.
“The way that technology is being integrated into the workplace seems to just be moving faster and faster as time goes on,” Schlotzhouer says.
“The way in which work is changing is just getting more and more rapid. When we think about these processes of AI being implemented into more workplaces and work processes, when we think about automation processes, there's a great deal of evidence that suggests that people do feel threatened by some of these processes.”
AI automation and employee knowledge hoarding
A recent report by digital transformation provider Adaptavist looked into employee sentiment about AI in their workplaces, and revealed that knowledge hoarding is a common behaviour employees engage in in response to fear of AI replacement.
Schlotzhauer explains that even if employers aren’t explicitly demonstrating that this is a possibility, employees will still draw their own conclusions.
“AI, automation, increasingly robots are being used in different workplaces, so these signal to people that their work, or at least parts of their job, may be replaceable,” she says.
“They may be able to be replaced by an algorithm, a robot, whatever. And I think that that only serves to sort of add an additional trigger for job insecurity. There's just yet another reason to feel like ‘Maybe I'm going to lose my job’.”
One-third of surveyed employees in the Adaptavist report said they are stockpiling their own expertise against this possibility, and others (60%) expressed concern about the loss of critical knowledge when colleagues leave the organization.
“Concerns about its impact on skills and job security are leading to psychological warfare,” the report states, “with employees ‘gatekeeping’ personal strengths.”
Consequences of knowledge hiding for organizations
Job insecurity doesn’t just affect individual employees – it can have significant negative impacts on teams and organizations. Knowledge hoarding and the similar-but-different knowledge ‘hiding’ (the act of deliberately denying colleagues or superiors access to one’s expertise) are just two tactics that workers employ when they feel their jobs are threatened.
“It's not just that people will knowledge hide in response to worrying about losing their jobs,” Schlotzhauer explains.
“But there's a whole host of behaviours that people tend to engage in, in an effort to make their job more secure.”
Some of these tactics can seem positive on the surface, she says, such as employees working longer hours or generally putting in more effort to hedge against being laid off. But, unfortunately, those behaviours do not translate into higher productivity.
“They're kind of trying to look like the perfect employee,” Schlotzhauer says.
“But we don't usually see, actually, a productivity gain associated with that behaviour. More often, it’s much more image-oriented … there's also evidence to link knowledge hiding behaviour [with] reduced innovation in workplaces. So creative processes and innovative work is reduced by knowledge hiding behaviour.”
The downstream effects are significant, she adds: teams may become less innovative, morale can drop, and organizations risk losing valuable employees who leave pre-emptively due to perceived threats to their job security.
Communication and transparency matter
One of the most common mistakes employers make, Schlotzhauer says, is assuming that job insecurity will motivate employees to work harder, when in fact the opposite is true.
“There are organizations who just don't think about or consider or worry about whether their employees feel insecure, whether their employees are worried about losing their jobs,” she says.
“There's something of a broad myth that people who are worried about losing their jobs will work harder, and you will see performance gains and productivity gains because people are trying to stand out and be really great performers in order to keep their jobs. And the research doesn't back that up.”
Schlotzhauer stresses that to get ahead of the morale and productivity issues of AI-related job insecurity, HR leaders should pre-emptively communicate with employees about their perceptions.
Regular check-ins, employee surveys, and transparent discussions about the purpose and goals of new technologies can help alleviate fears and reduce the likelihood of defensive behaviours like knowledge hiding.
“I do think that a lot of people, when they see increasing technology in their workplace, especially GenAI taking over certain processes or tasks – that feels like step one in ‘This robot steals my job’,” Schlotzhauer explains.
“The more that you can clearly communicate with employees, ‘Here is what this initiative is all about, here's what we are trying to accomplish’ – assuming that the goal is not to displace human workers – I think that that can help a lot.”
