March 27, 2026
How to Make Your Employees Feel Human in the Age of AI
The pitch from most AI vendors goes something like this: automate the routine, free up your people for the work that actually requires a human. It sounds reasonable. The problem is that the humans being freed up for that work are, by most available measures, the least supported, least engaged, and most anxious they have been in a decade.
US employee engagement fell to its lowest level in a decade at the end of 2024, with only 31% of employees engaged and 17% actively disengaged, levels not seen since 2014. Globally, the percentage of engaged employees fell from 23% in 2023 to 21% in 2024, only the second decline in 12 years, costing the world economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity.
Behind these numbers is a workforce navigating pressure by near-constant organisational change driven by AI adoption, persistent uncertainty about job security, and a creeping sense that the role itself is being redefined around them. More than 30% employees worry about being replaced by AI, rising to 43% among Gen Z workers. What executives describe as reallocating skills, employees experience as a threat to their jobs and expertise.
The anxiety employees carry into work has a direct operational consequence. Even seasoned customer service employees are struggling, and burnout is already at a breaking point, with as much as 66% of the workforce reporting burnout in 2025. CX teams are being left to handle only the messiest, most emotional interactions, without the support or structure to do it well.
Proven on Paper, Ignored in Practice
Most organisations already have the data that connects how employees feel to how customers are treated. The problem is that they have built their management structures to ignore it. Engagement scores sit in HR, but customer satisfaction scores sit in CX. The two datasets rarely meet, and the leaders accountable for each are rarely the same person.
Seventy percent of engaged employees demonstrate a strong understanding of how to meet customer needs, compared to just 17% of disengaged employees. Companies with highly engaged employees see a 10% increase in customer ratings and are 21% more profitable. But when the metrics don’t talk to each other, those numbers stay in a presentation slide rather than driving a decision.
The arrival of AI has turned a management blind spot into a business liability. Organisations that treated AI primarily as a throughput engine in 2025 struggled to reconcile efficiency gains with rising stress and disengagement among frontline staff. Those that aligned digital investments with agent enablement showed greater confidence in their CX strategies overall. The organisations that kept squeezing throughput while conditions on the frontline deteriorated found that customer experience deteriorated with it.
You Can’t Mandate Warmth
The question organisations should be asking is how to create the conditions in which empathy comes naturally.
Management transparency goes a long way towards reducing fear and building trust during periods of AI-driven change. Employees who understand where AI fits into the organisation’s strategy, and what it means for their own role, are better positioned to engage with it as a tool rather than treat it as a threat.
It also requires rethinking what support looks like at the frontline. Laurence Buchanan, EY Studio+ Global Leader, put the direction of travel plainly in a recent industry roundup: “Brilliant, human service, characterised by empathy, care and emotion can elevate the customer experience and drive loyalty.”
This elevation, though, is only possible if organisations invest in the people expected to deliver it. Only 30% of US employees believe someone at work encourages their development. In a period when job roles are being actively redesigned around AI, that absence of investment is particularly damaging.
The Question of Authenticity
There is a harder question sitting underneath all of this, and it is worth asking directly: can an employee deliver a genuinely human customer experience if their own experience at work is performative rather than genuine?
The honest answer is no, not sustainably. Empathy is a resource, and like any resource, it depletes under sustained pressure and replenishes when people feel valued, supported, and secure. Rami Haffar, Partner at New Metrics, described what genuine leadership looks like in this moment: “The leaders that will stand out are those that will be able to bridge and apply cutting-edge technologies with human empathy, operationalising AI responsibility while keeping customer trust at the core.”
Organisations that invest in employee experience analytics have the means to track those conditions in real time and act before disengagement compounds. Those using employee experience platforms to connect recognition, development, and support are building the kind of environment where human CX is something employees can sustain.
