The impact of AI on people at work
BACP Workplace, April 2026

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already reshaping everyday life, from search engines to virtual assistants. Entire industries are changing and responding, often with fear. Barely a day goes by without news headlines warning of the threat from AI to jobs and livelihoods, and it’s described as the next industrial revolution transforming the workplace landscape. 

For those of us working as therapists or practitioners alongside organisations, AI isn’t just something our clients may bring into the room, we’re bringing it too. We’re supporting others through uncertainty and change, while quietly keeping one eye on our own roles, our work and our futures. This article is based on a talk I gave at BACP’s recent ‘Working with AI: does AI mean artificial therapy?’ event, exploring our relationship with AI in our work and how we can best support our clients. It draws on my frontline experience as a workplace trauma and crisis specialist, supporting organisations through sudden death, critical incidents and destabilising change.

In thinking about this, I’ve found it helpful to revisit the five stages of grief and loss curve conceived by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross to help explain how people respond to loss, which has since been adapted to help us understand how we respond to disruption and change – including the kind of change that shows up at work (see Figure 1). It isn’t a neat, linear model, nor is it a diagnosis. It’s simply a way of noticing patterns in how human beings respond when something familiar shifts. With AI being described as having such wide-reaching consequences, I’d encourage you to pause and consider where you might find yourself on this curve in relation to AI and your own professional world. 

There are no right answers. And you may find you’re in more than one place at once: some curiosity alongside resistance, a flicker of excitement mixed with anxiety. You may feel interest, concern, intrigue or perhaps a quiet sense that AI matters more than it did even a year ago, impacting you, your partner, your family and work colleagues. 

What do we see and hear about AI? 

According to the recruitment firm, Randstad, one in four workers now say that they’re worried that their job could disappear in the next five years as a result of AI.² That’s not a niche concern – it’s a significant portion of the working population. The impact rarely stops with the individual. For many people, it’s not just their own work that’s in view – it’s a partner’s role, an adult child entering the job market, a family member facing redundancy, or someone retraining later in life. 

Headlines about AI don’t just stay in the office. They shape conversations at home, influence career decisions and affect how secure or hopeful the future feels. They do not exist in isolation; they interact with broader worries about finances, stability and what comes next. 

An ‘unusual’ labour market

What we’re currently seeing in the UK labour market isn’t just normal churn or seasonal fluctuation. There are signs of deeper structural shifts – changes that organisations and workers alike are still trying to make sense of. Many organisations are reporting measurable productivity gains from AI, often in the region of 10 to 12%.³ Yet that increase in output isn’t being matched by a corresponding rise in hiring. 

Historically, when productivity increased, new roles tended to emerge somewhere else in the system. Greater output often meant expansion – more people, or at least different kinds of jobs. What feels different now is that AI enables some organisations to produce more with the same number of people – or fewer. 

From the outside, the message is, ‘We’re growing.’ And yet, from the inside, the experience can feel more like, ‘I’m carrying more, at greater speed, with less margin for error.’ This isn’t, for the most part, a story of mass redundancy. It’s subtler than that, as work is being quietly concentrated into fewer hands. Roles are thinning. Expectations are rising. Even when jobs still exist, the sense of safety around them can shift.^4,5 

In many restructures, AI appears alongside words such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘automation’ – not always as the headline cause, but as part of the rationale for doing more with fewer people. So, the impact, at least for now, isn’t primarily widespread job loss. But it is uncertainty, intensification and the growing feeling that work is changing faster than people can comfortably process, and the ground beneath their feet is not quite as solid as it once seemed. It’s important that workplace practitioners acknowledge just how prevalent this feeling is. 

Who is vulnerable to AI? 

A clear pattern begins to emerge around who is most exposed to AI-driven change when we look at the workplace landscape. Roles that are highly structured, repeatable, process-driven or documentation-heavy are usually feeling the impact first, particularly at entry level. These are the roles where tasks can be standardised, automated or significantly accelerated. That’s why disruption frequently shows up as hiring freezes, reduced graduate intake, or reshaped responsibilities rather than sudden, large-scale job losses. 

In other words, the change is often quiet. Fewer new roles are created. Existing roles are redesigned. Expectations shift. By contrast, the work that appears to be the least exposed, at least for now, is work that is deeply human. 

Deeply human work 

Work that relies on complex judgment, relational depth, ethical discernment and the capacity to hold ambiguity is far harder to automate. The ability to sit with uncertainty, to read nuance, to respond to emotion in real time, to weigh competing values – these remain distinctly human capabilities. That matters for our profession. 

Counselling depends on presence, attunement, ethical sensitivity and the co-creation of meaning in uncertainty. It is not simply the exchange of information; it is relational work grounded in trust and human connection. However, that doesn’t mean that as a profession we are untouched by change. But it does suggest that the aspects of our work that are most central – judgment, presence, meaning-making – are also the aspects least easily replicated. That distinction is worth noticing. 

Adaptation 

Alongside these shifts in organisations, something else is happening. We’re seeing some people quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, change direction. They are moving towards work that feels harder to automate and easier to feel needed in. It’s a search to find work that feels solid, tangible and secure. Young people, and many older workers retraining mid-career, are actively rethinking their paths. Skilled trades such as plumbing, electrics, construction and mechanical work are increasingly described as ‘AI-resistant.^’6 

This is not because they are untouched by technology – these sectors use digital tools, diagnostics and automation too. But the core work is much harder to digitise, automate, or standardise in the way that administrative or screen-based roles can be. We’re seeing something similar in care professions, such as social care, nursing and support work, particularly where there is in-person responsibility for another human being. The same applies in emergency services and frontline response roles, where judgment, improvisation and accountability cannot simply be outsourced to a system.⁷ 

So, to be clear when I refer to work being ‘less exposed,’ I don’t mean untouched. I mean work that AI struggles to fully absorb because it is embodied, relational, situational – deeply human. This is the terrain that our clients, and many practitioners, are now navigating – whether we like it or not. 

While it’s easy to describe what’s happening in purely structural terms, for example, vacancies shifting, roles reshaped, career pathways narrowing or expanding, change doesn’t stay structural for long. It shows up in people and behaviour. People are trying to do their jobs, make decisions and plan their lives while the rules are changing – without a clear sense of where things will settle. Over time, that kind of uncertainty does more than create worry. It quietly reshapes how people see their role, their value and where they feel they fit in society. 

Questions of self 

This goes to the heart of what it means to be human. I think it’s important to name it, because it’s happening beneath the surface, in a time of rapid change. For many of us, work isn’t just about income or routine; it’s a major source of identity, structure, status and meaning. So, when work changes, whether that’s through AI, restructures, automation or ongoing uncertainty, people don’t just adapt their skills; they adapt their sense of self. 

It’s an existential threat which enters our world, not dramatically, but quietly. While clients do not usually arrive in our therapy rooms naming these questions directly, we can expect that, in time, they will. As AI becomes a more regular part of our professional landscape, which of these questions has resonated with you, even briefly? 

• Am I still needed?
• Do I still matter?
• What’s my place now? 

Recently, I heard the term ‘relevance anxiety’ for the first time. It might be a new term to you but I think it’s an important one. If we miss or avoid acknowledging the questions about identity and meaning, we can rush forward trying to offer clients reassurance and solutions, while the underlying threat is still active. This is often the point at which the wrong kind of support gets offered. That’s when people feel unheard, minimised, or quietly disengage, even when the help is well intended. 

Threat to identity and professional worth 

A key theme emerging in conversations about AI and workplace change is the threat to identity and professional worth. Decades of organisational and psychological research have shown how strongly people attach to their work. When roles shift, narrow or disappear, that sense of value can wobble. What we often see is heightened anxiety and vigilance, as people feel pressure to stay relevant, to keep up, to prove themselves or try to avoid being ‘the one who is next’. Even when there is no immediate change occurring, the nervous system can remain on alert, wired and scanning for the next threat. 

There can also be a loss of confidence or mastery, particularly when familiar tasks are automated or when long-developed skills begin to feel of less value. For those whose professional identity is grounded in competence and experience, this can be deeply unsettling. Sometimes this distress presents as disengagement, cynicism or emotional flattening. It may be misread as burnout or lack of motivation, when underneath the feeling lies uncertainty and a loss of meaning. 

Shame and guilt can also surface, especially in workplaces where AI tools are already embedded. People may feel relieved by the support these systems provide, yet uneasy about what that relief implies. In roles with strong ethical responsibility and little clear guidance, this ambivalence can be particularly acute. Crucially, the impact is uneven. Within the same team or profession, some individuals may feel energised and curious, while others feel threatened or left behind. 

These are all normal human responses to real workplace change. Our role as workplace counsellors is to recognise these patterns early and to create spaces where they can be named, understood and worked with, rather than dismissed or rushed towards premature solutions. 

A dual role 

As practitioners, we are not standing outside these changes – we are inside them. Many of us are navigating AI in our own working lives: automated administration, shifting expectations, questions about pace, relevance and value. At the same time, we are supporting clients who are grappling with strikingly similar fears. This creates a dual role. We are holding other people’s existential uncertainty while managing our own responses to the same conditions, and that response is rarely singular. For many of us, it is both relief and unease, curiosity and anxiety, and gratitude for supportive tools alongside concern about what they signal. 

As therapists, we need to examine and re-examine our own stance towards AI and understand it. If we don’t, we may be at risk of subtly pulling our clients towards our own position without intending to. Of course, we are not outside this moment. We are part of it. Clients read us more than we often realise. They read our tolerance for uncertainty and how quickly we move to reassurance. They also notice whether we feel steady, rushed, defended or overly certain. 

Therefore, if we rush toward certainty, clients often follow us, not because it serves them, but because it relieves us. When fear and threat go unnoticed, they constrict the work. However, when they are acknowledged, the work has room to breathe. 

Learning from the pandemic 

The COVID-19 pandemic offered a powerful lesson in this regard. We could not fix the uncertainty because there was no fixing it. Perhaps, like me, you found yourself saying more often than ever, ‘I don’t know.’ Not apologetically, but calmly and honestly. Paradoxically, I found this did not increase anxiety in clients. It often created safety. We were not providing answers; we were providing presence. We helped people live inside uncertainty rather than escape it. I believe the task before us now is similar. The context is new, but the core work remains the same. 

Trauma-informed approaches 

Once we understand the psychological impact, the practical question becomes: what actually helps when the threat of AI is real? Of course, this is not about denying change, nor about imposing meaning. As in trauma-informed practice, our role is not to supply meaning but to hold space while people find their own. While this is not trauma work as such, there are useful parallels for us. Significant disruption can reshape a person’s assumptive world and their sense of how things should function, what is predictable and where they belong. 

Therefore, part of our task is helping people remain psychologically intact while facing reality. If their working lives are changing, if roles are uncertain, if AI is genuinely altering how value is defined, pretending otherwise erodes trust. Psychological safety emerges from naming reality clearly without catastrophising it. We need to be able to say: ‘Yes, things are changing. And no, you are not imagining the impact. It is real.’ 

Closing thoughts 

Trauma-informed approaches prioritise regulation before adaptation. People cannot think, learn or reorient themselves while their nervous system is in a state of threat. Support, therefore, focuses on restoring agency, choice and dignity. It does not force optimism. Nor does it demand resilience. Or rush people into reframing or reinvention before they are ready. 

When we feel a sense of threat at work, it is often a threat to our sense of identity, meaning and belonging. Treating that response as legitimate, rather than dramatic, is essential. At its core, this approach asks a simple question: ‘What does this person need to help them to stay human, present and grounded while the ground beneath them is shifting?’ 

Ultimately, this is where the work is for our profession and our sector. It calls for steadiness rather than certainty. While the pace of technological change is unprecedented, we need to remain present in the face of uncertainty, to acknowledge threat without amplifying it, and to protect the dignity and identity of the people in front of us. If we can tolerate not knowing and resist the pull to prematurely resolve discomfort, staying curious about our own responses as well as our clients’, we create the conditions for thoughtful adaptation rather than reactive change. Our work is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to help people live and work within it, with their sense of worth intact, being aggressively and deeply human.