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By Alice Shikina
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Artificial intelligence is not the greatest threat facing today’s workforce. Distrust is. Companies can use AI to make people dramatically more productive, create new opportunities, and expand what their existing workforce can accomplish.
But when leaders introduce AI through secrecy, ambiguity, and mass layoffs, they risk turning a technological transformation into a crisis of confidence that can undermine the very organization they are trying to improve.
A recent Reuters report about Meta’s AI strategy illustrates the danger. Meta explored scenarios that could reduce some teams by as much as 60 percent as it pursued an “AI native” organization.
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Employees became convinced that AI initiatives were partly designed to replace them. After a first round of layoffs, plans for a second wave were abandoned. Meta said it never intended to lay off 60 percent of its entire workforce. Still, the episode exposes a fundamental problem: once employees believe technology is being used against them, leadership loses control of the conversation.
Employees Are Participants in the Negotiation
I recognize this pattern because I have spent years sitting between people when trust has deteriorated. In mediation, I repeatedly see the same mechanism. When people lack information, they create explanations. When leadership leaves critical questions unanswered, employees do not simply wait patiently for clarification: they connect the dots themselves.
That is especially dangerous during an AI transition. Tell employees that AI will transform their jobs while simultaneously introducing restructuring, monitoring, or headcount reductions, and they will naturally wonder whether they are being developed or replaced. A productivity tool starts looking like surveillance. A restructuring starts looking like a warning. A request for feedback starts looking like theater.
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This is where companies make a devastating mistake. They forget that employees are participants in the negotiation.
Leaders cannot simply announce a strategy, manage the messaging, and expect everyone else to fall in line. Employees hold institutional knowledge, technical expertise, relationships, and influence over whether a transformation succeeds. If leaders ask for feedback and then ignore it without explaining why, they have not created participation.
The Risk of Resentment and Increasing Turnover
They have created resentment. Gallup likewise warns that when organizations solicit employee feedback but fail to act on the results, engagement can decline and turnover can increase.
The consequences extend far beyond morale. Distrust changes behavior. People become less willing to share information, less inclined to take risks, and more focused on protecting themselves. Colleagues spend hours dissecting leadership announcements and reassuring one another instead of doing their jobs. Productivity becomes collateral damage in a conflict nobody officially acknowledges.
Trust is also a two-way relationship. Employers should ask themselves an uncomfortable question after destabilizing a workforce: Can we honestly expect people to remain loyal when we have demonstrated that their own security may be negotiable? If the answer is no, the damage does not end when the layoffs do. It follows the organization into retention, recruitment, collaboration and reputation.
There is a better path. Companies can use AI to expand human capability before assuming its primary value is eliminating human beings. Bring employees into the process early. Explain what is changing, what is not changing, and what remains uncertain. Ask for input, respond to it, and explain decisions employees dislike. Most importantly, treat uncertainty as a leadership responsibility, not a communications problem.
The choice is consequential. Handle AI transformation with transparency, and employees can become participants in a period of extraordinary productivity and growth. Handle it through fear and opacity, and companies may create a workforce that spends more energy protecting itself than advancing the business.
So before announcing the next AI restructuring, leaders should ask a different question: not “How many employees can AI replace?” but “How much more could these employees accomplish if AI made them exceptionally capable?”
The future of work will be shaped by AI. Whether workers trust the people deploying it is still a leadership decision.
Alice Shikina is a mediator, arbitrator, negotiation coach, author, and speaker in Oakland, California. She founded Shikina Mediation and Arbitration and works with individuals and organizations navigating complex interpersonal and professional disputes.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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