Our Workforce and Work Environment are Changing With the Speed of AI
2/14/24 – – Like clockwork, just after the ball drops in Times Square signaling the start of a new year, announcements of corporate layoffs are in the news. This year is no exception.
According to human resources consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. companies planned more than 82,000 job cuts in January, the highest monthly total since March 2023. Among the recent right-sizers are such marquee corporations as Alphabet, Amazon, BlackRock, Microsoft, UPS, Nike, and eBay.
But what’s driving this year’s headlines — and should most interest crisis communicators — are not the numbers or names, but the stated and implied reasons being given for these terminations.
High on the culprit list is artificial intelligence (AI).
A January 18 AXIOS headline declared, “‘AI made us do it’ is Big Tech’s new layoff rationale.” It appears that investors love the promise of AI and want to know two things from every company: How are you using it as rocket fuel for your business, and how much cost are you reducing by incorporating it? Announcing workforce reductions is an easy, immediate way to demonstrate an AI dividend.
Recognizing the double-edged sword of AI (“great for business, bad for people”), Challenger, Gray & Christmas SVP Andrew Challenger believes that estimates of the number of AI-related firings are way low. “Every time a company mentions it, they get headlines across every news outlet for like a month,” Challenger told the Wall Street Journal. “They would rather go under the radar most of the time.”
There’s another controversial aspect to the layoffs we’ve been reading about: First on the chopping block have been people working from home.
Analysis by Live Data Technologies reported in The Wall Street Journal suggests that remote employees are being laid off 35% more often than their in-office and hybrid peers. It’s not that employees still working in their pajamas are less productive than those who schlep into the office. This bias has more to do with human nature. “When a hiring manager gets news they have to cut 10% of the staff, it’s easier to put someone on the list you don’t have a close personal relationship with,” said Challenger.
I guess participating in eight hours of Zoom meetings every day doesn’t trump the adage, “out of sight, out of mind.”
There’s one more trend that caught my eye: Companies trying to manage resources, including head counts, while staying one step ahead of dizzying change, are building “blended workforces.” What were full-time positions are being filled by flex and temporary workers.
It’s understandable, especially as AI and other advancements are redefining the skill sets in demand, that companies are reluctant to commit to permanent employees. And today’s workers, empowered by their pandemic-tested resiliency, seem to be okay with this arrangement. I’ve seen projections that as many as 86.5 million Americans — about half our total workforce — will chose to be working gig or temporary jobs by 2027.
So, what does all this mean for communicators?
Delete the old job-reduction press release templates from your files and work with your leadership team to more accurately and humanly explain the reasons for the inevitable announcements to come. Encourage your CEO to drop the “this is painful for our entire corporate family” spiel and opt more for honesty. Chances are good that more and more of your workforce will be made up of temporary “family” members anyway.
And in the interest of job security, check out AI-generated versions of your company’s next layoff announcement and CEO all-company email. If they’re better than yours, work extra hard not to become just another example of an AI dividend.
Crisis Quotient Blog 