A Thinking Business publication
There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the arrival of AI in the workplace, not least because its advent heralds a new era of transformational change for leaders and employees to navigate. Further, the headlines about AI taking over professional services jobs and replacing staff with chatbots and datasets are plentiful and hard to ignore.
But cutting through the hype to understand the present realities is important, particularly as businesses look to reassure workers and move forward thoughtfully with their AI implementation and technology strategies.
The first thing to accept is that AI is here to stay: there is little option for most companies but to explore its potential and embrace its use where it makes sense to do so. “AI will be transformative,” says Amardeep Gill, partner and head of the public sector practice at Trowers & Hamlins. “But it will be transformative in the same way that email and the internet were transformative before it, although the pace of change is far greater. Leaders need to both understand the technology and its application and help their teams to adapt.”
Unemployment hit 5 percent in the UK for the three months to September 2025, the highest rate since the period covering December 2020 to February 2021. Particularly hard hit has been graduate entry level roles, where job postings have fallen from 180,000 four years ago to just 55,000 today, according to job platform Reed.
And yet while many have blamed AI for that employment decline, the truth is more nuanced, says Rebecca McGuirk, head of employment and pensions at Trowers: “There are many reasons why graduate recruitment is low at the moment, many of them associated with economic uncertainty and rising costs. Certainly, businesses may be looking at how tech can help with addressing those challenges, but an investment in tech is expensive too – it is no cheap quick fix.”
The impact of macro issues on employment data is being conflated with concerns about AI eroding jobs, says McGuirk. She also points out that research increasingly indicates the new technology will not have such a dramatic impact as some fear on the job market.
Research from Goldman Sachs suggests that, while innovation related to AI could displace 6 to 7 percent of the US workforce if AI is widely adopted, the impact is likely to be transitory. New job opportunities will be created as the technology ultimately puts people to work in new capacities.
“A recent pickup in AI adoption and reports of AI-related layoffs have raised concerns that AI will lead to widespread labour displacement,” Joseph Briggs, who co-leads the Global Economics team in Goldman Sachs Research, and economist Sarah Dong, wrote in that report. “While these trends could broaden as adoption increases, we remain sceptical that AI will lead to large employment reductions over the next decade.”
Developing an ethical AI strategy
After dispelling myths and reassuring workers, the next step for many business leaders will be an AI audit to identify both the threats and the opportunities that new technologies might bring to their organisation. Those impacts will vary enormously from one industry to another, and from one business to the next.
“What we are seeing is that AI is disproportionately affecting professional services,” says Gill. “Just as blue collar workers were impacted by automation, so professional advisers are impacted by a new unprecedented access to knowledge and perceived wisdom. However, the provision of knowledge is only one part of what an adviser does, and AI cannot fully replace strategic guidance, corporate expertise or implementation experience.”
Many businesses will identify potential efficiency gains and time savings that can be delivered through AI adoption. “It gives you the ability to look through a lot more data,” says McGuirk. “Because it can summarise large amounts of data, leaders can keep abreast of far more sources of information and have far more data feed into their decision-making.”
Businesses are tackling both understanding what the technology can do and navigating a successful roll-out. When completing an audit to identify potential use cases, employees should be part of the conversation, not least because different teams will see different applications, ranging from document review to data processing.
Once use cases and tools are found, a clear policy is needed to govern implementation. Gill says: “Businesses will need AI strategies that tackle some of the big issues around transparency, accountability, regulatory compliance and fairness. When buying a product, organisations need to understand the algorithms on which decision-making is being based, as there can be a discrimination risk there.”
Where AI is used to sift through job applications, for example, it might introduce unconscious bias into decision-making if it has been trained to look for certain keywords. There is evidence that men use different language when completing job applications to women, so a tool trained on male applicant responses may inadvertently disadvantage female job seekers.
Similarly, it is important employees are using the right tools and using them properly, so that confidential business data, or personal data relating to customers, does not get shared on open platforms.
Then there is the regulatory angle to keep close watch over. “We have a real patchwork regulatory framework in the UK as it relates to AI,” says Gill. “You need to be mindful of GDPR, the Equalities Act and the new Employment Rights Bill. Those will all have an impact on how AI can be used in the workplace.”
Lean in or get left out
AI adoption certainly does not come without complexity, but that is no reason to stay away. “The onus is on the business to lead,” says McGuirk, “because otherwise you risk your people using it incorrectly and losing control of your data, which can give rise to significant reputational damage as well as penalties from the Information Commissioner's Office.”
A report by Microsoft published in May 2024 found that 75 percent of global knowledge workers were already using AI in their roles. Most said it was helping them save time, focus on their most important work and be more creative. The concerning aspect, however, was that three-quarters of workers were using their own AI tools at work, without guidance or clearance from the top.
The other big risk of failing to adopt AI is being left behind. Gill says: “There has to be broad acceptance that AI is now going to be widely incorporated into service delivery across industries. That is the emerging client expectation. Businesses have to be conscious that they will now be competing with rivals that have started with AI from the ground up and may be more digitally native and nimble.”
AI adoption certainly does not come without complexity, but that is no reason to stay away. A thoughtful approach grounded in clear ethics, policies and principles has to be the way forward.
