An article from Dive Brief

Leaders who can’t see worker problems are creating a ‘dignity debt’

As artificial intelligence tools create heightened productivity demands, a significant percentage of workers are stressed and crave more transparency at work.

Published June 5, 2026 Lara Ewen Contributor

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Dive Brief:

• While 81% of leaders said employees have become more productive over the past 12 months, 85% of employees said they’re significantly stressed at work, according to a BambooHR survey released June 2. The company called this disparity between leader perceptions and worker reality the "dignity debt.”
• As artificial intelligence tools are becoming more prevalent, their implementation is adding to the dignity debt, per the report. More than half of leaders (57%) said they’d terminate a worker who refused to use AI, while 54% of employees said AI regularly interferes with their work, and 47% had negative reactions regarding AI at work.
• Meanwhile, 54% of leaders said they’re not dealing with known operational flaws because the problems are too expensive or disruptive to fix.

Dive Insight:

The growing disconnect between what company leaders think is happening and what employees say is happening has been exacerbated by the rapid deployment of AI tools paired with pressure from investors to cut costs and increase productivity, the report said. As a result, there’s been less transparency, mentoring, development and trust.

“Dignity debt is the compounding cost of treating people as a means to productivity rather than as the humans who make productivity possible,” the report said.

The report surveyed more than 900 full-time employees and more than 300 business leaders and found that 57% of workers believe “there’s a fundamental flaw in how their industry operates.” Nonetheless, employees are mostly looking for truth, with 89% saying they want a combination of transparency, honesty amidst uncertainty and visible leadership. Of those traits, transparency (58%) was the most-wanted leadership quality.

Against this backdrop, AI is producing more output, but not always creating more value, the report suggested. Nearly three out of four employees (73%) said productivity was up at work, but 49% of leaders said that AI hasn’t delivered tangible results, and that the tech may have been oversold.

“AI may be helping companies produce more output, but without clearer workload expectations, training, measurement, and role design, employees are left with more pressure to perform and less clarity about what success looks like,” the report said.

However, human workers have been deprioritized at some companies, with 39% of organizations reporting that they cut staff by replacing employees with AI. At the same time, 57% of leaders said they’re finding it hard to hire qualified candidates.

“When companies believe their hiring process is working, but roles remain open, the burden doesn’t disappear,” the report said. “It shifts to the current workforce: employees absorb the extra workload, teams are stretched thinner, and organizations delay the investments needed to build a stronger talent pipeline.”

Workers are feeling this pressure, with 50% saying their workplace is toxic, 46% saying there are no growth opportunities and 25% saying company leadership is not effective.

“These concerns signal that workers are absorbing the cost of unresolved organizational strain,” the report said. “When people leave because the work feels toxic, growth feels blocked, or leadership feels ineffective, the organization isn’t just losing talent; it’s losing credibility.”

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Filed Under:

Talent,

HR Tech & Analytics