Happy Thursday, everyone. I'm Frank Richardson, an organisational psychologist observing the workplace with curiosity and care. Each week, I share insights to help HR leaders better understand the people behind the processes and build cultures where both individuals and organisations can thrive.
This week in workplace whiplash 🌀
It’s been a slightly chaotic week in the world of work, with signals pointing in completely different directions depending on where you look:
🧼 “AI-Washing” Is Becoming a Thing
Atlassian’s layoffs have sparked debate around whether companies are using AI as a convenient explanation for restructuring decisions. The term “AI-washing” is gaining traction as scepticism grows.
👉 The HR Digest📉 Promotions Are Slowing Down
As the labour market cools, promotions are becoming harder to come by. New data shows fewer internal moves and slower progression, suggesting that for many employees, career growth may now look more like waiting than climbing.
👉 SHRM🌿 Marijuana Testing Isn’t Going Anywhere (At Least for Now)
Despite shifting social norms, US federal agencies are sticking with marijuana testing for employees. It’s a reminder that workplace policy often moves far more cautiously than public opinion.
👉 HR Dive
And underneath all of this, something else is changing, not the work itself, but how it feels to actually do it…
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I had an unsettling realisation the other day.
I was drafting a document, hopping between AI tools to summarise notes, structure the argument and generate a first pass. Within fifteen minutes, it was done. A task that would normally take most of the morning was finished before my coffee had a chance to get cold.
Objectively, it was impressive. Super efficient and exactly what these tools are meant to do.
But when I closed the document, I felt… underwhelmed. There was no real sense of progress or satisfaction of having figured something out. Just a weirdly foggy, over-processed feeling, like my brain had been outsourced.
I was talking to my colleague about it and he named it instantly: “AI brain fry.”
The phrase is starting to do the rounds, with early reporting suggesting that heavy AI use can leave employees feeling oddly disengaged, even as their output improves.
There’s no denying that AI is making work faster, but what’s less clear is what it’s doing to the experience of work while it’s at it.
🧠The behavioural science lens
There’s a quiet assumption baked into most conversations about productivity: if something is faster and easier, it must also be better. But behavioural science has been politely disagreeing with that for years:
Challenge and engagement are closely linked: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on flow shows that people are most engaged when a task stretches them just enough. Not overwhelming, not trivial, but sitting in that uncomfortable middle where you actually have to think. Remove the challenge entirely and the experience tips quickly into boredom.
Effort does more than slow you down, it creates attachment: The IKEA effect shows that people value things more when they’ve put effort into creating them. Flat-pack furniture is the obvious example, but the same logic applies to work. When something arrives mostly finished, it tends to feel less like yours.
Automation has a habit of quietly dulling skill: Research on human–automation interaction shows that when systems take over too much of the cognitive heavy lifting, people’s ability to do that thinking themselves can fade. The issue isn’t laziness, it’s lack of use. Skills need friction to stay sharp.
Mastery is one of the reasons people show up in the first place: Self-determination theory highlights competence as a core psychological need. People are motivated by the feeling that they are getting better at something. That feeling tends to require effort, iteration and the occasional struggle.
Put together, this creates an interesting tension. The same tools that remove friction from work can also remove the parts that make it feel engaging.
🚀What this means for leaders
Most organisations are still focused on where AI can save time. That’s a useful question, but it’s only half the picture. The more interesting one is what happens to jobs once the “hard bits” are gone. Look to:
Use AI to remove friction, not the thinking: There is a difference between speeding work up and hollowing it out. Repetitive tasks are fair game. Core judgement and problem-solving are where value tends to sit.
Protect opportunities to actually practise skills: If AI writes the first draft every time, people don’t get much repetition. And without repetition, capability plateaus faster than expected.
Watch for roles quietly becoming review jobs: Spending a day editing AI outputs sounds efficient until you realise it’s also deeply monotonous. Jobs still need moments of exploration, not just refinement.
Be deliberate about how AI is framed: When it’s positioned as a support tool, people tend to lean in. When it feels like a substitute for their thinking, engagement tends to drop off.
Keep an eye on energy, not just output: If productivity is rising but people feel flat, disengaged or mentally checked out, something important is being lost in the process.
💬 Final thoughts
AI is delivering on its promise of speed. Work that once required sustained focus can now be completed in minutes, and often to a pretty decent standard.
But work has never been just about output. A large part of its value comes from the process of figuring things out, building skill and occasionally getting stuck before getting it right.
If those moments disappear entirely, organisations may find themselves in a slightly odd position. Highly productive teams, delivering quickly, while feeling far less engaged than anyone expected.
How's the depth of today's edition?
If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.
Until next week,
Frank
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