Editorial
Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Gamma and others, are quickly changing our workplaces. From automating emails to brainstorming campaigns, creating presentations and drafting code, these tools are reshaping how work gets done. But beyond productivity, they affect another crucial dimension: employee capacity.
Organizational energy — the collective mental, emotional and physical capacity of employees — is a powerful force. It influences innovation, collaboration, engagement and resilience. Leaders who ignore how new technologies affect this, risk missing the bigger picture: AI is not just a tool, it's an energy shifter.
Here are three ways generative AI tools boost employee energy and three ways they drain it — and how you can amplify the positive while managing the challenges!
3 Ways Generative AI Enhances Organizational Energy
1. Reducing Repetitive Work Frees Up Cognitive Capacity
AI tools are great at handling repetitive, mundane or time-consuming tasks — from summarizing meeting notes and generating first drafts to sorting data and automating scheduling.
Take a marketing coordinator who spends hours drafting social media captions. With AI, they can generate ideas in minutes, freeing their energy for strategy and creative planning. Or a project manager who uses AI to organize meeting summaries and next steps, so their energy can go toward stakeholder alignment instead of administration.
Employees experience a cognitive lift. Their brains are less bogged down by busywork and more energized for problem-solving, innovation, creativity and deeper human connection, more meaningful tasks that fuel purpose.
2. Supporting Faster Decision-Making
AI tools can rapidly synthesize large volumes of information, providing summaries, insights and options to help employees make informed decisions more quickly.
A product designer might use AI to research user trends, generate concepts and iterate faster. By reducing decision fatigue, employees feel more confident, which boosts their emotional energy.
When mental clutter is reduced and clarity increases, employees feel sharper, more capable and ready to take action.
3. Enabling Learning and Skill Growth
AI tools can act as 24/7 learning companions. Whether someone is drafting a complex document, writing code or analyzing a dataset, AI can provide them with real-time support.
This creates a culture of self-directed learning. Instead of waiting for formal training or fearing gaps in their skillset, employees can upskill on the job.
The sense of mastery and autonomy increases emotional energy and confidence, while supporting long-term capacity building.
3 Ways Generative AI Can Drain Organizational Energy
1. Fear of Job Displacement or Role Redefinition
One of the biggest concerns surrounding AI is the fear of being replaced. This fear, even if unspoken, saps mental and emotional energy. People may become distracted, anxious or disengaged.
Uncertainty about the future leads to cognitive drain. Employees can't operate well in a state of tension. It reduces creativity, collaboration and clarity.
2. Overwhelm and the Pressure to 'Keep Up'
With new tools emerging constantly, employees can feel like they’re always behind. Learning how to use the tools, integrating them into workflows and keeping up with changes can become a burden.
Instead of saving time, AI tools may add complexity. This creates stress, performance anxiety and energy depletion — especially for employees who are already stretched.
3. Concerns Around Privacy, Ethics and Bias
When the rules around AI use are unclear, or if employees are unsure whether their data is safe, they hesitate to use it. Additionally, concerns about algorithmic bias may erode trust.
Distrust and confusion disrupt flow. Employees waste energy trying to "get it right," avoid missteps or are hindered by fear, instead of feeling supported and secure in their use of the tool.
3 Ways Leaders Can Support Positive Energy Through AI Adoption
1. Encourage Purpose-Driven Experimentation
Invite employees to identify a task or pain point that drains them, and challenge them to find a way to use AI to improve it. This approach flips the narrative from "What AI might take away" to "What it can give back."
For example, a recruiter may use AI to organize their materials or summarize interview notes — freeing time for candidate connection or organizational insight.
This approach helps employees experience first-hand how AI can remove friction and boost flow for their specific needs and experiences.
2. Provide Role-Relevant Training, Not Just Tools
Generic AI training rarely sticks. Tailor support to each role's workflows. Focus on teaching core skills like writing effective prompts, validating AI output and ethical usage.
For example, provide designers with prompt templates for faster ideation, or customer service teams with guidance on using AI for drafting empathetic responses.
With clarity and relevance, employees feel more confident and in control. Their energy shifts from anxiety to action.
3. Be Transparent and Clear About Policy
Create clear, simple policies about what AI can and can’t be used for in your organization. Be explicit about privacy protections, expectations and boundaries.
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For example, communicate whether internal data can be used with public AI tools, and offer secure alternatives if needed.
When people know the guardrails, they feel safer and are more likely to explore without fear — boosting both trust and mental energy.
What Will You Choose?
Leaders play a pivotal role in how AI affects the energy of their teams. When approached intentionally, generative AI can be a powerful ally in reducing burnout, increasing flow and enhancing human capacity.
But left unchecked, it can trigger energy draining fear, confusion and overload.
Your job isn’t just to roll out new tools or jump on the latest bandwagon. It’s to create the conditions where energy is protected, potential is unleashed and the human side of work is strengthened-not sidelined.
AI is here to stay. The question is: will your organization use it to purposefully energize or (perhaps, unintentionally) exhaust? The choice, and the opportunity, is yours.
Editor's Note: Read more about tips to preserve employee focus and energy:
- Are Energy Vampires Sucking the Life Out of Your Organization? — What to look out for and what to do about it.
- Employee Experience Is Under Threat. Here's Where to Focus Your Efforts — Evidence is mounting that employers are falling short on employee experience ambitions. Here are four areas that need attention.
- AI Workplace Fears Are Taking a Toll. Here's What You Can Do — The fear that AI is coming for jobs is adding stress in the workplace, but employers can get ahead of it all with five simple techniques.
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