We’re seeing AI show up everywhere. AI is being used to program apps, create graphic design pieces, and even by major accounting firms to produce significant reports for their clients. People are being laid off and replaced with AI agents. And, there are problems. Workplace culture is taking what I call the AI hit. The workplace culture is being torn apart because of the way people are being treated.
So, here’s what’s happening. Leadership thinks they can cut costs and improve deliverables by replacing their people with AI. They bring in AI to do the work their people were doing, let their people go, discover the quality of the work produced is insufficient, and then try to hire their people back. Well, it’s too late.
The best cultures are built on the idea of people being valued. When someone feels valued, they are more engaged, more productive, and ultimately more profitable for the organization. When someone is made to feel expendable or when your teams see people all around them being mistreated or blatantly let go, the message is sent that profits matter, people don’t.
In the best cultures, people matter, and because of that, the people make sure that the profits show up. When leadership values their people and recognizes that leadership is both accountable to and accountable for their people, leaders will see their people differently, treat them differently, and achieve different results.
It’s not that AI is bad. What’s bad is when we just dismiss someone to save a few dollars on our overhead. If you hire someone, you, as a leader, have a responsibility to ensure their safety and success. This shows up in your accountability. Or it doesn’t.
And, once you go down the road of cutting people, it’s hard to backtrack. Everyone now knows how you see them and exactly where they stand.
Building a sustainable, high-performance workplace culture always starts with putting people first and positioning them to do their very best for the organization. When you create a workplace culture like that, you will always have a stronger bottom line.
Want to better utilize AI in your organization? Arm you people with it, let them harness the power to make their very best, and then go take on the organizations that let their people go. You’ll always come out on top because caring leadership produces a caring workplace culture, and people who want to reward their leadership by winning.
