Wellbeing for the AI-Driven Workplace: Mitigating Stress, Building Trust

Trust is one of the pillars of proper artificial intelligence (AI) adoption within an organisation, especially employee trust. The results of a recent poll in the UK suggest that trust is missing. More than half of adults (51%) in the UK are concerned about the impact of AI on their job security.

However, other research reports that a third of workers in the UK are using AI in secret. Workers in the UK are open to AI, and are already seeking it out on their own. The problem is not a fear of AI technology, but a fear of employers implementing it against their workforce's best interests.

With proper communication and well-planned change management, organisations can reap the benefits of AI whilst actually improving employee wellbeing. When AI is designed with people in mind, everyone wins: businesses reap the rewards of AI, and employees feel more engaged, supported, and motivated to stay.

The wellbeing risks of AI in the workplace

We all know about the fear surrounding ‘will AI replace me?’, but other, less talked about consequences include:

• Stress and uncertainty: Job redesign without clarity leads to anxiety
• Surveillance concerns: AI-driven monitoring can undermine trust and autonomy
• Information overload: Constant new tools create change fatigue
• Bias and fairness worries: Lack of transparency damages trust in management decisions

These consequences come largely from poor change management, which is essential for speedy and effective AI adoption. When wellbeing is treated as an afterthought, AI initiatives suffer.

The upside: How AI can enhance employee wellbeing

The good news is that this is not complicated to remedy. When AI is designed with employees in mind, wellbeing isn't just maintained. It can be improved.

Harvard Business Review identifies excessive workload as one of the main causes of burnout - but the type of work being done matters just as much as the amount. Too much rote work is also what pushes people closer to burnout, by taking all the joy out of their jobs and opening the doors to boredom and monotony. For instance, no one becomes a Product Manager because they’re enthusiastic about manually updating project trackers.

This is something we’ve seen at Deel. By building tools that automate routine tasks, we lift hours of work from our colleagues' plates, without eliminating the need for their experience and expertise. This is one of the many reasons we’re able to operate and grow at our famous ‘Deel Speed,’ whilst keeping our employee engagement rates high and maintaining the quality of our work.

Learn more from Abhijit about how we combine AI and human insight for better work.

This doesn’t mean that automating everything is the answer. The second cause of burnout on HBR’s list is a perceived lack of control. This means that any new AI initiatives must be implemented responsibly, with transparency and trust-building top of mind. Now, let’s examine the approach.

How to implement AI with wellbeing in mind

There’s a difference between implementing AI with employee wellbeing in mind, and aiming to boost employee wellbeing through AI-driven initiatives. The first is a non-negotiable for successful adoption, and more about mitigating negative consequences. The second is worth considering if you need to improve key employee retention metrics.

When introducing new AI tools and workflows, remember these key pillars:

1. Communication and transparency: Get ahead of the rumour mill, and be upfront about your AI plans. Share goals, timelines, and pre-prepare an FAQ document for people to refer to later.
2. Success stories and early adopters: Identify power-users of AI within the organization and encourage them to share tips and wins with the wider team. Not only does this help adoption, but it also encourages a more positive attitude towards the change.
3. Ethics and responsibility: Ensure fairness, privacy, and compliance are built into your AI processes. Clearly communicate what steps you take to mitigate bias, particularly in recruitment.
4. Feedback and safety: Create robust feedback mechanisms that allow employees to tell you what they think, and encourage people to use it. AI is experimental, and to foster a culture of experimentation, it’s important that teams feel safe raising their hands when something isn’t right.
5. Workforce planning: Anticipate how AI will affect roles and responsibilities, and develop plans that help managers guide their teams through these changes, through upskilling or reallocation of tasks. By collaborating directly with the employees most impacted, you demonstrate that “augmentation over replacement” is more than just lip service. It’s a genuine commitment.

AI for employee wellness initiatives

AI can play a more active role in addressing employee wellbeing. AI tools can recommend training or career pathways, helping employees feel more supported in their career growth. Predictive analytics can identify skills gaps and identify early signals of disengagement before they lead to turnover. AI can also be used in capacity planning, flagging when teams or employees are being assigned more than they can handle.

However, any AI initiative that deals with sensitive employee data, or has a potential impact on their career progression should always be overseen by humans. While AI can create and curate content and automate basic messaging, it cannot make decisions over who gets promoted and decide which direction people’s careers should take.

Preparing employees for the age of AI

AI implementation is a shared journey, with trust, fairness, and employee wellness being just as important as technical performance. For organisations to fully realise the potential of AI, HR leaders must champion responsible AI and be the voice of the workforce when decisions are being made.

If you’d like to see what it looks like when AI is built with people in mind, try out Deel AI Workforce. You get a pre-built library of AI Agents that augment your team, proactively lifting repetitive tasks from their workloads. Sign up today, and show