We’ve all been on a quest to make our workdays a little easier. For years, we’ve been adopting new tools, automating tedious tasks, and stripping away the barriers that slow us down. With AI, we’re closer to that frictionless day than ever before. Yet, in our rush to make work as smooth as possible (which, don’t get me wrong, I highly value), might we risk dissolving the social fabric that helps teams thrive?
Workday’s recent research, the Human Connection Workplace Index, shows that 14% of employees overall, and 20% of Gen Z, have taken time off in the past year due to feelings of loneliness or isolation.
To understand why efficiency doesn’t necessarily lead to well-being, I wanted to look closely at the work of Constance Hadley, PhD, an organizational psychologist and the founder of the Institute for Life at Work. She has spent years studying the drivers of employee isolation. Her empirical work on workplace loneliness demonstrates that true human connection is more complex than simply co-existing in a physical or digital workspace.
When I sat down to chat with Hadley about how emerging technologies intersect with workplace isolation, she captured our new reality perfectly: “We now have AI as a potential substitute for human connection, and it’s a new player in the relationship dynamic at work.”
In her most recent research , published in Harvard Business Review , Hadley found a trend. Three-quarters of regular AI users reported turning to AI for career coaching and friendship, support traditionally provided by colleagues.
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