When someone we love dies, we understand why grief hurts: someone mattered, and their absence reshapes our world. Mourning allows us to honor what was, mark what ended, and listen for what our grief reveals about what we value. That recognition can guide what we carry forward.
Death, however, is not the only loss humans grieve. While technological rupture differs from bereavement, the rapid, widespread adoption of AI is setting the stage for a psychological crisis of grief across corporate America.
In boardrooms and breakrooms alike, employees are silently grappling with unprecedented new anxieties: What becomes of the skills I spent years mastering? Have I lost confidence in my colleagues when I question whether AI is responsible for their work? Am I myself losing the muscle to think critically without AI? Will my function become obsolete? Behind these questions are several forms of grief—a mourning of lost professional identities, eroded trust, and envisioned career paths that are vanishing overnight.
As the co-founder and executive director of Reimagine, an organization dedicated to helping individuals and communities navigate grief collectively, I recognize a deeply familiar dynamic unfolding in today’s AI-driven workplace. Whenever human beings face fundamental loss, whether personal or systemic, a common instinct is to try to turn away from it or suppress it. But if we don’t integrate our grief in healthy ways, it has negative consequences for our physical and mental health, and it can often lead to destructive action.
Recent corporate data confirms that this tension is already fracturing company cultures. An August 2026 Gallup study revealed that employees at organizations deploying AI extensively were significantly more likely to report a worsening workplace culture. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that 53% of workers worried that relying on AI for critical tasks made them look replaceable, while over half admitted to hiding their AI usage from management entirely.
When leaders fail to acknowledge the rising grief, or actively dismiss it as standard “employee resistance to change,” they miss the core issue. Failure to address these non-death workplace losses carries severe organizational costs. Reimagine’s own recent research, conducted in partnership with HarrisX, explores the realities of U.S. adults’ experience with non-death loss. The findings show that when major disruptions go unsupported by others, they lead to experiences of distress comparable to grief from death loss. The reported consequences include high levels of isolation, anger toward others, distrust of institutions, and physical symptoms such as sleep problems, fatigue, pain, or illness—comparable to those reported by people grieving a death..
To lead effectively through the AI transition, executives should move beyond forced optimism and make room for employees to name what they fear losing. By listening to what people grieve, leaders can identify the values at risk and find new ways to live them forward as work changes. The answers can lead to practical choices. Grief over lost mastery might lead organizations to invest more deeply in mentorship and hands-on learning. Grief over eroding trust might prompt clearer norms around authorship, honesty, and transparency—and, in turn, a more candid, connected workplace. Grief over low-quality, AI-generated work may reveal just how much we value quality, care, and human judgment.
When leaders first acknowledge that the grief is real and then take steps like these to honor what is being lost, employees can feel seen in their grief rather than misunderstood, as though they are failing or becoming obsolete.
Listening to employees does not mean stopping progress, nor does it absolve employers of responsibility. Workers are still owed transparency, meaningful transition support, and a real voice in decisions that affect their futures; thoughtful recognition should not be designed to secure acceptance of decisions already made. Our task is not simply to process what AI takes and move on. It is to name what we are losing, listen for the values our grief reveals, and give them new form. That is how grief can restore agency at work: not by returning work to what it was, but by helping us shape what comes next.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
