AI Is Changing Work. Recognition Helps People Change With It.
by Lou Evan
Last updated
5 min read
Table of contents
- Recognition Gives People a Reason to Lean Into Change
- Recognition Is Becoming One of the Most Valuable Signals Organizations Have
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Artificial intelligence has become the defining workplace conversation of the past few years. Organizations are investing heavily in new tools, employees are experimenting with new ways of working, and leaders are trying to balance excitement about what's possible with uncertainty about what comes next.
Much of the conversation has centered on the technology itself: which platforms to adopt, how to govern them responsibly, and how quickly employees can build the skills they'll need in an AI-enabled workplace.
Those are important questions, but they aren't the only ones organizations should be asking.
The challenge is now shifting from AI implementation to adoption. The technology may be ready. The question is whether people are ready to embrace it, trust it, and find confidence in a workplace that's changing around them.
Research from our recent report, 2026 Humans at Work Barometer feels especially relevant. We found that the organizations best positioned to navigate AI successfully will invest in "both the technical access to use AI, and the human infrastructure to make it worth using."
Human infrastructure is the environment that organizations cultivate every day. It’s beyond a software platform or a change management framework. It’s whether employees trust their managers, believe their work is valued, feelconnected to their teams and confident enough to ask questions, experiment, and learn without fear of falling behind. It ultimately becomes the foundation of any new technology’s success.
In the 2026 Humans at Work Barometer, we found that:
- More than half of employees say pressure at work has increased over the past year
- Nearly half finish the workday mentally exhausted
- Only 42% say the current pace of change feels manageable
Those numbers reflect more than growing workloads, but the emotional weight of trying to keep pace with constant change while continuing to perform at a high level. The human infrastructure at work has some serious fractures to address.
AI can help people work differently, but it can't tell them where they fit in that future. That responsibility still belongs to leaders.
Julie Stone, Chief Learning Officer at TTEC, summed up that responsibility perfectly on the HR Leaders podcastOpens in a new tab at Workhuman Live. Reflecting on AI transformation, she pointed out that while today's technology may feel unprecedented, the leadership response shouldn't.
“It really doesn't matter what the challenge is, what the transformation of the day is. Right now it's AI, but we've had many -- we've had COVID, we've had going way back, Y2K, we've had financial and political instability. What it requires for people in a company is their leaders to apply the same principles that they always have. Those don't change. You wrap your arms around people, you create that climate where they feel valued. They feel like they belong and they feel like they can grow with you for the long term.”
Every major technological shift encourages leaders to focus on what's new, but Julie’s point is that employees often look for what's familiar. They want to know their manager still sees them, that their contributions still matter, and that there is still room for them to grow even if the work itself evolves.
Thoughtful and strategic recognition feels particularly crucial in our current technology landscape.
Recognition isn't just celebrating success after the fact. During periods of transformation, it becomes an affirmation that someone is making progress, adapting, and continuing to contribute. It reminds people that they are valued not just for what they already know, but for their willingness to learn what comes next. It becomes a signal for adaptive behavior, new processes, and learning opportunities.
Our customer, Akamai Technologies, one of the world’s largest cloud computing, cybersecurity, and content delivery network providers, is a shining example of the power of integrated recognition. Ken Wechsler, Akamai’s VP of Total Rewards, explains how recognition is often how their employees begin their day.
Julie from TTEC sees AI at its best not as a replacement for human relationships, but as a way to strengthen them. In the HR Leaders podcastOpens in a new tab, Julie explained that AI has helped remove administrative friction so coaches can spend more time doing what matters most: connecting with people. As she put it, "the people were in the center in the beginning and they remain in the center the entire time."
There's a tendency to think about recognition as something that follows change—as a way to celebrate milestones once a transformation has been completed. But that's not how Julie describes it. She talks about recognition as something that helps people move through change itself.
AI is changing the world, especially the way we work. But recognition helps keep the people in the center of all that transition. Most importantly, it keep the human infrastructure strong.
Recognition Gives People a Reason to Lean Into Change
If employees aren't using new tools, the instinct is often to provide more training, purchase additional licenses, or encourage people to spend more time experimenting.
The reality is, not everyone is willing to embrace change simply because they've been given access to new technology. We begin to embrace change when we understand how it connects to the work we’re already doing and when we feel supported enough to take the inevitable risks that come with learning something new.
That's something Ken Wechsler, Vice President of Total Rewards at Akamai Technologies, kept coming back to during his conversation on the HR Leaders podcast. Reflecting on why so many AI initiatives struggle to gain traction.
Technology rarely fails because the software doesn't work. More often, organizations struggle because people don't know what success actually looks like. They're handed a new tool, encouraged to "go innovate," and left wondering how that fits alongside the work they're already expected to do.
Julie Stone described seeing the same pattern. Too many organizations measure AI adoption by whether employees completed training or logged into a new platform. But, as she put it, "to get true work redesigned, to get true transformation, it's never just training." Employees don't simply need access to AI. They need context for when, where, and why they're expected to use it.
If organizations want employees to embrace new ways of working, they first have to make sure employees feel their contributions are visible. Recognition helps close that visibility gap by making great work easier to see—and by reinforcing the behaviors organizations want more of during periods of change.
That recognition doesn't simply celebrate outcomes but creates positive signals around the behaviors organizations want to see more often is one of its most overlooked value-adds.
When appreciation becomes specific and intentional, people begin paying closer attention to one another's work. They notice acts of collaboration that might otherwise go unseen. They acknowledge someone who helped a teammate through a difficult project or shared knowledge that made everyone else more effective. With an aggregate of thoughtful recognition data, organizations can see, day in and day out, how the culture is functioning, where its heading, and how it can be improved.
In that sense, recognition helps create the culture necessary for sustainable transformation.
Recognition Is Becoming One of the Most Valuable Signals Organizations Have
Recognition has, historically, been viewed through the lens of employee experience. Organizations invested in it because people who feel appreciated are more engaged, more connected to their work, and more likely to stay. That hasn’t changed.
As AI becomes more sophisticated, organizations are finding themselves surrounded by more data than ever before. The data has the potential to measure productivity, analyze workflows, summarize meetings, and identify patterns at a scale that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago.
A binary world of ones and zeroes can provide a lightning fast yes or no. But without qualitative data, much of the story gets lost to interpretation and guesswork. That's what strategic recognition addresses.
Every recognition moment captures something that would otherwise disappear. It tells a story about someone who solved a difficult problem, coached a colleague through a challenge, stepped in when a project went sideways, or consistently made the people around them better. Those are the moments that shape culture, boost performance, and drive results, yet they've traditionally been difficult to measure because they happen between people, not inside systems.
Our CEO and founder, Eric Mosley believes AI is opening the door to an entirely new way of understanding organizations. For decades, companies have relied on performance reviews, engagement surveys, and manager observations to understand how work gets done. Recognition adds another dimension by capturing how colleagues experience one another every day.
As Eric explainsOpens in a new tab, "That's all it is. It's human opinion. And so what Future Leaders does and what all of our AI tools do, it kind of tries to get the knowledge out of people's brains in the company about all the work that's being done and all the people in the company."
Rather than asking organizations to predict leadership potential based solely on resumes, tenure, or organizational charts, Future Leaders learns from how colleagues consistently describe one another over time. As Eric said, Future Leaders is built from "the language that people use about each other."
Future Leaders doesn't suggest AI should decide who gets promoted. It suggests AI can help leaders see patterns using human data. And that may be one of the most unexpected lessons of the AI era: the more sophisticated our technology becomes, the more valuable it is to understand what only people can teach us about one another.
See the future of leadership more clearly.
Every recognition moment tells a story. Future Leaders helps organizations understand those stories at scale, surfacing the behaviors, relationships, and patterns that identify tomorrow's leaders long before traditional talent processes can.
Learn how Future Leaders transforms everyday recognition into actionable leadership intelligence by requesting a demo.
Lou Evan
Lou Evan is a Senior Content Specialist at Workhuman. Having worked most of his career in the employee recognition space, he brings a firsthand perspective to the cultural, psychological, and ultimately financial impact of tailored, strategic recognition programs. Lou believes in friendship, family, and creativity.