How AI Is Fueling Workplace Anxiety and Redefining Power Dynamics

21 June 2025

As AI technology advances, CEOs are increasingly using it to shape workforce dynamics in ways that often heighten employee anxiety.

By leveraging AI for automation – or merely suggesting its implementation – executives gain significant control over their teams.

This control can manifest as heightened job insecurity, with employees fearing replacement by machines and feeling pressured into higher productivity or accepting lower wages.

In 2025, leaders at companies like Amazon, JPMorgan, and Salesforce have begun openly signalling that AI adoption could directly impact job stability, often encouraging staff to embrace the technology or risk being left behind.

While such rhetoric may be framed as forward-looking, it often deepens unease among workers already grappling with evolving expectations.

Recent data shows that about 8 per cent of U.S. employees use AI tools daily – double the figure from the previous year – though many do so privately, reflecting hesitation or unclear guidelines within organisations.

A significant usage gap also exists between managers and staff: 33 per cent of managers report using AI regularly, compared to only 16 per cent of individual contributors.

This discrepancy suggests that executives and team leaders are engaging more aggressively with these tools, further contributing to a top-down narrative around AI’s role in performance and relevance.

Surveys also reveal the psychological weight AI introduces into workplaces. Around 58 per cent of managers believe employees fear AI will cost them their jobs, while 64 per cent say workers are worried the technology makes them less valuable.

At this time, 77 per cent of employees report that AI increases their workload, often due to time spent correcting AI errors rather than reducing overall task burden.

Despite the sense of looming disruption, actual job displacement remains limited, with only 14 per cent of workers reporting that AI has directly replaced their roles.

Interestingly, the share of people who believe their job will disappear in the next five years has remained stable at just 15 per cent, unchanged from two years ago.

This complex picture reveals that while AI may not yet be eliminating jobs at scale, it is clearly shifting power dynamics and redefining how performance and value are measured.

In this environment, transparent communication, robust training programmes, and clear ethical frameworks are more crucial than ever to ensure technology adoption enhances, rather than undermines, workplace well-being.

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