Loneliness scares workers more than layoffs
The Workday research reveals a stunning finding: 43% of employees say they are more concerned AI will reduce interactions with colleagues than eliminate their jobs. Already, one-third report rarely or never having conversations with people they work with beyond transactional work tasks during a typical week. Less than half now say it’s easy to make friends at work.
Viewed in isolation, these findings would be disconcerting. Viewed in the context of broader social trends, they become even more alarming. Social connections have weakened significantly since COVID, and Americans already report higher levels of loneliness, fewer close friendships, and less time spent with friends than in previous generations.
A study by the American Survey Center found that by 2021, the percentage of Americans reporting zero friends had already quadrupled, from 3% to 12%. Workday found 14% of employees took time off during the past year after experiencing feelings of loneliness and social isolation.
Today, workers are increasingly turning to chatbots for needs that once influenced them to reach out to teammates. Over the past year, 76% have solicited their advice, 52% have used them for creative ideation—and 37% have relied upon them for companionship. Justifying this new dependence, most people say AI is always available, passes no judgment, and is instantly responsive. Increasingly, AI is becoming the first place employees turn to for answers, ideas, feedback, and problem-solving.
For all the generations that preceded the arrival of AI, work generated countless opportunities for human connection. Employees asked experienced coworkers for help, met in person to brainstorm, collaborated and problem-solved—together. These interactions weren’t just the way work was historically done, they also inherently helped build relationships, friendships, trust, and a sense of safety and belonging. One missed conversation means little, but thousands of missed conversations across an organization can fundamentally alter what holds it together.
Even some of the leaders building these technologies have expressed concern. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, recently cautioned against people becoming emotionally attached to AI companions, describing them as “friends with no future.” Researchers at MIT are beginning to confirm why: Heavier AI chatbot use is associated with greater loneliness, lower levels of real-world social interaction, and higher emotional dependence on the very systems people are turning to for connection.
No one builds a life—or a career—in isolation. The greater risk isn’t that AI replaces human relationships, but that it eliminates the moments that create them.
Belonging doesn’t happen by accident
Belonging—the very thing AI is eroding—is not simply a desirable workplace outcome. It is a foundational requirement for employee well-being. It is built in the small, unremarkable moments that accumulate over time: a colleague who notices you struggling, a hallway conversation that turns into a breakthrough, a team that celebrates together and recovers together.
In the world’s largest employee well-being study—surveying over 15 million people—the Oxford University professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve found that belonging ranks as the single biggest driver of employee well-being. Not compensation. Not flexibility. Not career growth. Belonging. Yet only 6% of managers recognize it as such. When belonging is absent, leaders pay a compounding price: People sense little connection to their team and organization, leaving them wide open to securing it elsewhere. Collaboration becomes transactional, candid conversations become less frequent, mentoring opportunities are lost, and interpersonal trust withers away. And the damage rarely shows up all at once. It accumulates—one missed connection at a time.
Design for human connection
The solution, of course, isn’t to resist AI. The benefits are clearly real and will only grow. The opportunity is for leaders to bring the same intentionality to protecting human connection that their organizations have brought to adopting AI. The challenge is to ensure that efficiency doesn’t become the only thing that matters.
Anchor to a higher purpose
Understandably, organizations have so far approached AI as an efficiency tool. This proves to be far too narrow.
As employees have quickly demonstrated an ability to leverage AI to get more things done, leaders must now establish a clearer philosophy for how AI will be used—one that ensures the technology serves human development, creativity, collaboration, and purpose rather than becoming an end in itself. As Seneca warned, all examples of excess become a fault.
Read the full article here: New data: AI makes work easier. And lonelier
