Keeping the Human Connection in the Workplace in an AI World

New research featured in the Harvard Business Review highlights the importance of maintaining human connections at work amidst increasing reliance on AI.

The business cost of loneliness: Beyond the personal toll, employee loneliness can negatively impact job satisfaction, performance, and retention. Technology integration and the rise of remote and hybrid have only increased feelings of isolation and alienation.

• Of the nearly 1,600 knowledge workers (who all identified as being AI adopters) surveyed by HBR for its research, 16% rated high on its Work Loneliness Scale, 36% medium, and 48% low.

Turning to AI for emotional support: More and more employees are turning to AI and AI chatbots – rather than coworkers -- for personal support, including career advice and emotional validation. The study also found that employees treat AI tools like humans, using human-like terms to describe chatbots and polite language when interacting with them.

• An astounding 74% of survey participants reported using AI for at least one form of social support, including:

• Career development (by far the most popular)

• Personal growth

• Friendship

• Emotional support

• “AI is my best friend in my work,” reported one participant, while another noted that “AI responds to me in a human way with a tone that I like and makes me feel heard and important.”

The downside: The study identified four negative implications of increased use of AI for personal support, including:

• AI can depopulate the workplace and create more isolation

• AI can cause degradation of social skills and lower motivation to connect with humans.

• AI removes the need to go to colleagues for help, which can undermine opportunities to build trust.

• Because it is in fact artificial, AI can trigger a sense of existential loneliness.

How to ensure AI does not weaken human connections: The study offers four recommendations for strengthening human connection amidst AI integration, including:

• Monitor the social impact of AI adoption: Conduct regular surveys of team cohesion and employee loneliness.

• Establish guidelines for when and how AI can be used to replace human interactions: Create “human in the loop mandates.” Coaching, mentoring, conflict resolution, and team building are examples of functions that should remain primarily human.

• Design AI to promote human interaction: Avoid over-humanizing AI, including giving agents names or personas, and look for ways to introduce “positive friction” into employees’ interactions with AI.

• Use AI to organize relationship-building activities: Use the time saved by AI on mundane work tasks towards human-bonding activities.