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As companies adopt AI, the conversation is shifting from the promise of productivity to concerns about AIs impact on wellbeing. Business leaders cant ignore the warning signs. The mental health crisis isnt new, but AI is changing how we must address it. More than 1 billion people experience mental health conditions. Burnout is rising. And more people are turning to AI for support without the expertise of trained therapists. What starts as empathy on demand could accelerate loneliness. Whats more, Stanford research found that these tools could introduce biases and failures that could result in dangerous consequences. With the right leadership, AI can usher in a human renaissance: simplifying complex challenges, freeing up capacity, and sparking creativity. But optimism alone isnt a strategy. Thats why responsible AI adoption is a business imperative, especially for companies building the technology. That work is not easy, but its necessary. UNCLEAR EXPECTATIONS Weve seen what happens when powerful platforms are built without the right guardrails: Algorithms can fuel outrage, deepen disconnection, and undermine trust. If we deploy AI without grounding it in values, ethics, and governancedesigning the future without prioritizing wellbeingwe risk losing the trust and energy of the very people who would lead the renaissance. Ive seen this dynamic up close. In conversations with business and HR leaders, and through my work on the board of Project Healthy Minds, the signals are clear: People are struggling with unclear expectations around AI use, job insecurity, loneliness, uncertainty, and exhaustion. In a recent conversation with Phil Schermer, founder and CEO of Project Health Minds, he told me, Theres a reason why professional sports teams and hedge funds alike are investing in mental health programs for their teams that enable them to operate at the highest level. Companies that invest in improving the mental health of their workforce see higher levels of productivity, innovation, and retention of high performers. 5 WAYS TO BUILD AN AI-FIRST WORKPLACE THAT PROTECTS WELLBEING Wellbeing should be at the core of the AI enablement strategy. Here are five ways to incorporate it. 1. Set clear expectations Employees need to understand how to work with AI and that their leaders have their back. That means prioritizing governance and encouraging experimentation within safe, ethical guardrails. Good governance builds trust, and trust is the foundation of any successful transformation. Investing in learning and growth sends a powerful message to employees: You belong in the future were building if youre willing to adapt. We prioritize skill building through ServiceNow University so every employee feels confident working with AI day-to-day. In a conversation with Open Machine CEO and AI advisor Allie K. Miller, she told me that we need to redefine success in jobs by an employees output, value, and quality as they work with AI agents. This means looking at things like business impact and creativity, not just processes or tasks completed. 2. Model healthy AI behavior AI implementation is a cultural shift. If we want employees to trust the technology, they need to see leaders and managers do the same. That modeling starts with curiosity. Employees dont need to be AI experts from day one, but they need to show a willingness to learn. Set norms around when, why, and how often teams engage with AI tools. Ask questions, share experiments, and celebrate use cases where AI saved time or sparked creativity. AI shouldnt be an opt in for teamsit should be part of how we work, learn, and grow. When leaders use AI thoughtfully, employees are more likely to follow suit. 3. Pulse-check employee sentiment consistently To design meaningful wellbeing programs, leaders must ground analysis in data, continuously improve, and build for scale. That starts by surveying employees to track sentiment, trust, and AI-related fatigue in real time. Then comes the harder part: acting on the data to show employees theyre seen and supported. Leaders should ask: Are we tailoring wellbeing strategies to the unique needs of teams, regions, and roles? Are we embedding empathy into our platforms, workflows, and automated tasks? Are our AI tools safe, unbiased, and aligned to our values? Are we making mental health a routine part of manager check-ins? According to Schermer, The organizations making the biggest strides are the ones treating wellbeing data like commercial data: measured frequently, acted on quickly, and tied directly to outcomes. 4. Focus on connection, keeping people at the center AI should not replace professional mental healthcare or real-world connections. We must resist the urge to scale empathy through bots alone. The unique human ability to notice distress, empathize, and escalate is largely irreplaceable. Thats why leaders should advocate for human-first escalation ladders and align their policies to the World Health Organizations guidance on AI for health. Some researchers are exploring traffic light systems to flag when AI tools for mental health might cross ethical or personal boundaries. AI adoption is a human shift, so people leaders need to take responsibility for AI transformation. Thats why my chief people officer role at ServiceNow evolved to include chief AI enablement officer. Todays leadership imperatives include reducing the stigma around mental health, building confidence in AI systems, creating space for open human connection, and encouraging dialogue about digital anxiety, loneliness, or job insecurity. 5. Champion cross-sector collaboration We need collaboration across industries and leadership rolesfrom tech to healthcare, from HR professionals to policymakersto create systems of care alongside AI. The most effective strategies come from collective action. Thats why leaders should partner with coalitions to scale access to care, expand AI literacy, and advocate for mental health in theworkforce. These partnerships can help us shape a better future for our people. THE BOTTOM LINE: AI MUST BE BUILT TO WORK FOR PEOPLE The future of work should be defined by trust, transparency, and humanity. This is our moment to lead with empathy, design with purpose, and build AI that works for people, not just productivity. Jacqui Canney is chief people and AI enablement officer at ServiceNow.
Category:
E-Commerce
Most of the software that truly moves the world doesn’t demand our attention: It quietly removes friction and gets out of the way. You only notice it when it’s broken. That’s not a bug in the business model; it’s a feature. In fact, “unnoticed but indispensable” is the highest customer-satisfaction score you can get. Consider these categories that already figured this out. The log-in that isn’t a task anymore Password managers, once you build the habit, fade into the background. They fill the box before you even remember there was a box. Single sign-on (SSO) systems go a step further and make logging in to everything feel like one action instead of 17 small, annoying ones. And passkeys get rid of passwords entirely. The pattern is consistent: Tools that turn a chore into a non-event ultimately win. It’s tempting to treat authentication like a “moment”: a page, a button, a ritual. The better approach is to treat it like plumbing. You notice good plumbing by its absence. Otherwise, you just enjoy the hot shower. Invisible infrastructure already won the internet Some technologies graduate from “choice” to “ambient.” Transport layer security (TLS) and HTTPS used to be optional. Now they’re table stakes, largely thanks to Let’s Encrypt making it approachable. Your browser nudges everyone toward secure defaults and the ecosystem complies. We don’t “do” TLS; we benefit from it. This wasn’t always so seamless. In Windows early days, you literally had to install a Winsock stack just to speak TCP/IP. Today, the network stack is simply present, like oxygen. Progress in software often looks like this: The thing we once had to fiddle with becomes the thing we don’t think about anymore. AI’s next act: not a chat box Chatbots are neat, but they aren’t the end state of AI. They’re a first draft, like when we used to watch early web pages load images line by line. The real value emerges when intelligent assistance is in the room where work already happens, and it becomes part of the workflow. In a CRM, the note writes itself while you talk and is already tagged correctly when you hang up. In design tools, the spec is updated everywhere when you change a component once. In code review, a suggestion appears inline with a one-click fix, not in a separate AI tab that hijacks your focus. This is the same story as passwords, SSO, and HTTPS: The win comes from disappearing the steps, not adding a new surface area for attention. (The funny thing is, most of the work of making AI invisible is just plain old engineering. Yes, there’s lots of AI engineering to make the bots work at all. But plugging them into things in a way that works, that’s the part we’re really behind on.) BORING ON PURPOSE IS A STRATEGY At my company we talk about being boring in a specific way: Security and connectivity should feel like electricity. You flip the switch, the lights come on, and nobody argues about the generator or the continent-wide high-voltage distribution network. Being invisible is not the same as being trivial; it’s the reward for sweating details users never see. Here are five design principles for making software people won’t notice 1. Make the default the decision. Someone once told me the golden rule of user interface design: If there’s a popup with two options, imagine one of them is “work” and the other one is “don’t work.” Then make “work” the default and delete the popup. Most users will never visit settings. If the secure, performant, accessible path is the default, adoption happens for free. 2. Budget for latency like it’s a feature. Under ~100ms, interactions feel instantaneous. Over ~1s, they feel like work. Invisible software feels fast because it never gives the user time to switch contexts. Cache, prefetch, and defer like your product’s life depends on it. Because it does! 3. Automate the paperwork, keep the signatures. Autofill, SSO, and passkeys are all versions of the same idea: The system should carry the burden. Let humans make approvals and set intent; let machines do the form filling and compliance trail. 4. Progressive disclosure beats feature sprawl. Hide power tools until they’re needed. The user who needs advanced controls will find them; the one who doesn’t should never meet them. UIs that start simple and get deep on demand feel “light” and earn trust. 5. Fail quietly, recover loudly. When background systems hiccup, self-heal first. If you must involve the user, say exactly what to do in one step and show you’ve already done the other three. Invisible products don’t turn every exception into a ticket. THE BUSINESS CASE FOR BEING FORGETTABLE “Unobtrusive” can sound like “unmonetizable,” but it’s the opposite. Products that vanish into the workflow produce fewer support tickets, shorter onboarding, and more expansion inside organizations. They spread by word-of-mouth because they don’t create new habits; they remove old pain. You don’t need a big campaign to sell relief. The tricky part is cultural, not technical. Teams must be okay shipping value that isn’t screenshot-worthy. That means investing in the edges: reliability, identity, zero-touch setup, and instant rollback-so customers never have to learn those words. A SIMPLE TEST If turning your product off causes immediate, confused swearing from the people who didn’t even know they depended on it, congratulations: you’ve built something great. Now make it a little faster and a little quieter, and do that every quarter. Because the best compliment your software will ever get is silence.Avery Pennarun is CEO and cofounder at Tailscale.
Category:
E-Commerce
The trajectory of our national economy is a central concern of every American. Our living costs rise as would-be hegemons battle over neocolonial control through tariff policies. And while social media creativity holds our attention, some part of us recalls older ways of storytelling, and we wonder, where do we belong? Most of us, even newcomers to this countryespecially newcomerswere taught from an early age that anyone who works hard will eventually thrive. But we repeatedly see and know that this is merely a story told to us, not reality. The community in which you are born has a tremendous impact on your eventual life outcomes. If you are born into a poor community, you will likely remain poor. If you are born into a wealthy one, you are likely to remain wealthy. Author Isabel Wilkerson and socioeconomic researcher Raj Chetty both describe this grating reality. We want to believe in the American Dream, but our eyes see, our ears hear, and our cortisol levels reflect the stress we feel as we strive to reconcile reality with the conflicting narratives of America as a place where anyone can thrive through hard work. Instead, it is time for a new narrative. THE POWER OF NARRATIVE IN SHAPING ECONOMIC REALITY Narrative, more than facts alone, shapes perceptions about who deserves opportunity and resources. Media, pop culture, and policy discourse reinforce or challenge our status quo by elevating the stories of the bootstrapping successful entrepreneur while ignoring stories of the barriers still in place. After the murder of George Floyd, local TV and the culture turned its attention to topics of structural racism. What followed? Increased business attention on audiences, stakeholders, and customers who were concerned with undoing generations of discrimination. No one with any knowledge of history expected such attention and focus to be permanent. Like looking into the sun, we knew America would quickly avert its eyes. Yet we still hoped that this solar moment would have greater public resonance. Despite the very public backlash against all things equity, support for diversity, equity, and inclusion persists among many Americans who have experienced the richness and benefit of desegregated life. We now struggle to find the safest words and phrases to describe our internal sense of sharing humanity with otherseven those beyond recently erected walls. This unlabeled value is the seed of a new national narrative. THE RIGHT TO THRIVE At Living Cities, we believe the conversation around opportunity must shift from scarcity and survival to abundance and flourishing. When we reframe narratives to center the right of every person to truly thrive, particularly those from marginalized communities, we unlock powerful new possibilities for individuals, families, and entire cities. This positive focus moves beyond merely surviving in systems that were not designed for everyone, toward actively building systems that empower all to grow, innovate, and lead. By emphasizing narratives of thriving, we foster hope, agency, and dignity. We see entrepreneurs of color not as risky bets but as vital engines of economic growth rooted in resilience and innovation. We recognize neighborhoods historically denied capital not as liabilities, but as sites brimming with untapped potential. This new storytelling affirms that systemic barriers can and must be dismantled, and that access to resources drives shared prosperity, stronger communities, and sustainable development. Living Cities experience with cross-sector coalitions in cities has shown that using positive narratives of abundance can help community leaders see all individuals as worthy of investment. This helps strengthen community trust, catalyze authentic partnerships, and accelerate economic opportunity. Thriving is more than an aspirational goalit is a proven strategy for revitalizing cities and fundamental motivation for transforming lives. REFRAME THE CONVERSATION Living Cities supported city coalitions to use narrative change for direct results. For example, in Albuquerque and Memphis, positive use of narrative enabled loan underwriters to re-examine their assessment of risk related to Black and Latino entrepreneurs. To reframe the national conversation, organizations and companies can use these best practices in narrative and communications strategies: Cocreate stories with those affected: Community-led storytelling creates authenticity and greater impact. Blend hard data with lived experience: Combining human stories with local economic data persuades both hearts and minds. Invest in media literacy: Teaching audiences to identify and question stereotypes can reduce bias. Counter negative narratives with abundance, agency, and equity: Highlight systemic successessuch as new Black-owned businesses or increases in affordable homeownershipover deficit-based stories. INSPIRE A CULTURE OF ABUNDANCE AND EQUITY Reframing risk as a function of structural barriers, not personal failure, will give us the foundation we need for increased economic opportunity. Storytelling can shift public policy, local business investment, and economic outcomes. Anything is possible when we eliminate our outdated stereotypes and create a new foundation. Leaders, policymakers, businesses, and media must invest in narrative work as a core equity strategy, reframing the conversation to foster true abundance and agency in Americas communities. Joe Scantlebury is president and CEO of Living Cities.
Category:
E-Commerce
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