People matter more than ever as we witness one of the most significant technological advancements reshaping humanity. Regardless of size, every industry and organisation can adopt AI to enhance operations, innovate, stay competitive, and grow by partnering AI with people. Our research highlights three workplace trends and four global, strategic, and systemic human crises that affect the successful execution of all organisational transformation initiatives and pose potential barriers to implementing AI strategies, making people matter in the age of AI greater than ever.
Three key global trends.
According to Udemy’s 2024 Global Learning and Skills Trends Report, three key trends are core to the future of work, stating that organisations and their leaders must:
- Understand how to navigate the skills landscape and why it is essential to assess, identify, develop, and validate the skills their teams possess, lack, and require to remain innovative and competitive.
- Adapt to the rise of AI, focusing on how generative AI and automation disrupt our work processes and their role in supporting a shift to a skills-based approach.
- Develop strong leaders who can guide through change and foster resilience within their teams.
Four key global crises.
- Organisational engagement is in crisis.
Recently, Gallup reported that Global employee engagement fell by two percentage points in 2024, only the second time it has fallen in the past 12 years. Managers (particularly young managers and female managers) experienced the sharpest decline. Employee engagement influences economic output; Gallup estimates the two-point drop in engagement costs the world $438 billion in lost productivity in 2024.
- People are burning out, causing a crisis in well-being.
In 2019, the World Health Organisation included burnout in its International Classification of Diseases, describing “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Three dimensions characterise it:
- Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
- Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
- Reduced professional efficacy.
Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”
They estimate that globally, an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, costing US$ 1 trillion per year in lost productivity.
Burnout is more than just an employee problem; it’s an organisational issue that requires a comprehensive solution. People’s mental and emotional health and well-being are still not prioritised or managed effectively. Well-being in the workplace is a complex systemic issue that must be addressed. Making people matter in the age of AI involves empowering, enabling, and equipping them to focus on developing their self-regulation and self-management skills, shifting them from languishing in a constant state of emotional overwhelm and cognitive overload that leads to burnout.
- The attention economy is putting people into crisis.
According to Johann Hari, in his best-selling book, “Stolen Focus,” people’s focus and attention have been stolen; our ability to pay attention is collapsing, and we must intentionally reclaim it. His book describes the wide range of consequences that losing focus and attention has on our lives. These issues are further impacted by the pervasive and addictive technology we are compelled to use in our virtual world, exacerbated by the legacy of the global pandemic and the ongoing necessity for many people to work virtually from home. He reveals how our dwindling attention spans predate the internet and how its decline is accelerating at an alarming rate. He suggests that if you want to regain your ability to focus, you should stop multitasking and practice paying attention. Yet, in the Thesaurus, there are 286 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to paying attention, such as listen and give heed.
- Organisational performance is in crisis.
Research at BetterUp Labs analysed behavioural data from 410,000 employees (2019-2025), linking real-world performance with organisational outcomes and psychological drivers. It reveals that performance isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about shifting fluidity between three performance modes – basic: the legacy from the industrial age, collaborative: the imperative of knowledge work, and adaptive: the core requirement to perform effectively in the face of technological disruption, by being agile, creative, and connected. The right human fuel powers these: motivation, optimism and agency, which our research has found to be in short supply and BetterUp states is running dry.
Data scientists at BetterUp uncovered that performance has declined by 2-6% across industries since 2019. In business terms, half of today’s workforce would land in a lower performance tier, across all three modes, by 2019 standards.
GenAI depends on activating all three performance gears, and the rise of AI-powered agents is reshaping teamwork. Research reveals that companies that invest in adaptive performance see up to 37% higher innovation.
- Innovation is in crisis.
According to the Boston Consulting Group’s “Most Innovative Companies 2024 Report,” Innovation Systems Need a Reboot:
“Companies have never placed a higher priority on innovation—yet they have never been as unready to deliver on their innovation aspirations”
Their annual survey of global innovators finds that the pandemic, a shifting macroeconomic climate, and rising geopolitical tensions have all taken a toll on the innovation discipline. With high uncertainty, leaders shifted from medium-term advantage and value creation to short-term agility. In that environment, the systems guiding innovation activities and channelling innovation investments suffered, leaving organisations less equipped for the race to come. In particular, as measured by BCG’s proprietary innovation maturity score, innovation readiness is down across the elements of the innovation system that align with the corporate value creation agenda.
You can overcome these crises by transforming them into opportunities through a continuous learning platform that empowers, enables, and equips people to innovate today, making people matter in the age of AI. This will help develop new ways of shaping tomorrow while serving natural, social, and human capital and humanity.
Current constraints of AI mean developing crucial human skills
While AI can perform many tasks, it cannot yet understand and respond to human emotions, build relationships, be curious or solve problems creatively.
This is why making people matter in the age of AI is where their human skills matter.
Some of the most critical human skills are illustrated below.
These essential human skills are challenging to learn and require time, repetition, and practice to develop; however, they are fundamental for creating practical solutions to address the three trends and four crises mentioned above.
Making people matter in the age of AI involves:
- Providing individuals with the ‘chance to’ self-regulate their reactive responses by fostering self and systemic awareness and agility to flow with change and disruption in an increasingly uncertain, volatile, ambiguous, and complex world.
- Inspiring and motivating people to ‘want to’ self-manage and develop their authentic presence and learning processes to be visionary and purposeful in adapting, innovating, and growing through disruption.
- Teaching people ‘how to’ develop the states, traits, mindsets, behaviours, and skills that foster discomfort resilience, adaptive and creative thinking, problem-solving, purpose and vision, conflict negotiation, and innovation.
Human Skills Matter More Than Ever.
The human element is critical to shaping the future of work, collaboration, and growth. The most effective AI outcomes will likely come from human-AI partnership, not from automation alone. Making people matter in the age of AI as part of the adoption journey and partnering them with AI will turn their fears into curiosity and re-engage them purposefully and meaningfully, allowing them to contribute more to a team or organisation, improve their well-being, maintain attention, innovate, and enhance their performance. Still, it cannot do this for them.
Making people matter in the age of AI by investing in continuous learning tools that develop their human skills will empower them to adapt, learn, grow, and take initiative. External support from a coach or mentor can enhance support, alleviate stress, boost performance, and improve work-life balance and satisfaction.
Human problems require human solutions.
Our human skills are irreplaceable in making real-world decisions and solving complex problems. AI cannot align fragmented and dysfunctional teams, repair broken processes, or address outdated governance. These are human problems requiring human solutions. That’s where human curiosity and inspiration define what AI can never achieve. It is not yet possible to connect people, through AI, to what wants to emerge in the future.
Making people matter in the age of AI can ignite our human inspiration, empowering, engaging, and enabling individuals to unleash their potential at the intersection of human possibility and technological innovation. We can then harness people’s collective intelligence and technological expertise to create, adapt, grow, and innovate in ways that enhance people’s lives, which are deeply appreciated and cherished.
This is an excerpt from our upcoming book, “Anyone Can Learn to Innovate,” which is due for publication in late 2025.
Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.
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It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.
