Lockton hosted its ANNUAL PEOPLE SOLUTIONS FORUM (opens a new window) on Feb. 26, where human resources leaders across many industries gathered to discuss challenges they are facing today.
Amid strategies to deal with current macroeconomic conditions, rising benefits costs and shifting employee expectations (opens a new window),1 a central question emerged: Where does artificial intelligence (AI) belong in our work? Download now (opens a new window)
Lockton Dunning CEO Steve Idoux gave a directive for the discussion early: “AI will not replace HR,” he said. “The leaders of HR who use AI will replace the ones who do not.”
While AI can expand capacity, its most successful applications pair technology with human expertise; they don’t replace it. When strategizing around workplace AI use, speakers urged leaders to consider the current state of the workforce that’s creating an increasingly urgent need for technological support.
Employees are burned out and engagement is low
In addition to macroeconomic and political challenges, data indicate that employees around the globe are feeling the effects of burnout, defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed (opens a new window).”2 As of August 2025, nearly 30% of employees surveyed reported feeling burned out “very often” or “always,” according to Gallup (opens a new window).2 Factors like unfair treatment at work, unreasonable workload or timelines, and lack of communication or support from managers can contribute to employee burnout (opens a new window).2
Similar patterns have emerged in employee engagement, defined as “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.” In 2024, Gallup reported a drop in global employee engagement equal to that of the COVID-19 pandemic, when employee morale was considered low due to things like work-from-home mandates and shelter-in-place orders (opens a new window).3
Both burnout and disengagement carry financial consequences. Beyond losses in productivity and increased medical costs, Gallup estimates that voluntary turnover driven by burnout can cost between 40% and 200% of an employee’s salary, depending on their level (opens a new window).4 Its findings also estimated $438 billion in lost global economic productivity due to a lack of employee engagement in 2024.
Despite this data, noted keynote speaker Seth Mattison, co-founder and CEO of FutureSight Labs, each year, companies look to extract more from their employees. “We have operated under a philosophy and an ethos that in order to feed the mandate for growth, we have to extract it out of our people,” he said. “It’s not sustainable.”
AI can help, but without strategy it could exacerbate burnout
With AI more prevalent in the workplace, so too is the tension about whether it helps employees or adds more to their plates. There is data to show that the technology can certainly help boost productivity for remedial tasks. Wells Fargo reported that using AI to help locate important information when assisting customers has cut its average response time down from 10 minutes to 30 seconds, for example (opens a new window).5
According to some preliminary data, AI may even help alleviate some of the effects of employee burnout. A 2025 survey of 200 IT professionals saw a 25% drop in emotional exhaustion for employees that used AI tools (opens a new window).6 In addition, Bayer estimated about six hours per week given back by AI to its research and development team, according to Microsoft’s 2025 World Trend Index Annual Report (opens a new window).5
On the flip side, however, some fear that the same tools that are designed to relieve workload could just as easily accelerate burnout if they are used without intention. A survey by the Harvard Business Review found that AI can actually intensify work by widening job scopes, encouraging multitasking or blurring the lines between work and non-work, making natural pauses and breaks throughout the day feel less restorative (opens a new window).7
This dissonance supports one of Mattison’s larger points. While AI may expand workplace capacity, many leaders are unable to answer the question: The capacity for what?
Strategize AI use with human-centered leadership
If AI expands capacity, then human-centered leadership must decide how that capacity is used. Forum speakers emphasized that one way to begin is to focus on capabilities that remain uniquely human, particularly the ability to build trust.
“While AI can do a lot of things, it can’t build trust between two people,” said Maryam Morse, Chief People Officer at Topgolf, who championed in-person connection and transparent communication as essential trust-building behaviors.
For Morse, transparency became critical during a period of significant change at Topgolf — from the sale of the business to performance challenges and a new CEO. “A year and a half ago, we were trying to pretend that things were better than they were when they were not good,” she said of her organization. “What we’ve transitioned to is this really transparent, full-of-clarity environment where we tell people what’s going on in every way. I think it’s been super powerful, and people are responding well.”
Human intervention may boost employee retention
Trust and connection not only humanize work, they also play directly into employee retention. A 2024 Gallup survey of over 700 employees who voluntarily left their jobs found that 42% felt their manager could have done something to keep them, and nearly half said their manager hadn’t had a job-related discussion with them during the 90 days prior to their resignation (opens a new window).4
Jade Marcantel, Chief Human Capital Officer at Intuitive Machines, emphasized this importance through the story of an employee who had struggled to find health coverage for his special needs child. Though they could have run solutions through a chatbot, she said, HR professionals at her company worked with him one-on-one to find a solution.
“That actually did play into a very specific retention conversation with him,” she said, when a competitor with deeper pockets tried to recruit that employee. She was able to tell him, “You’re not going to get someone who knows your kid’s name, knows how to make sure they’re getting the care that they need.”
New tech buy-in requires a human-centered approach
Maruchy Cantu, Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer at DFW International Airport, illustrated that trust, transparency and human intervention are just as important when introducing new technologies as they are in day-to-day interactions. Her team had implemented a significant technological upgrade that streamlined airport maintenance, but employees were hesitating to embrace it.
Recognizing a disconnect, she and her team took a pit stop to reframe their approach to implementation. “We had to step back and really figure, how do we show people that it’s not being done to me, it’s being done for me?” she said. “And really help them understand the benefits of what’s coming before we’re trying to deliver it and push it down their throats.”
Employees echo the importance of this kind of communication. In PwC’s 2024 Trust in Business Survey, almost three-quarters of employees said that the disclosure of their company’s AI governance framework was important, for example, yet only 33% of executives stated that the companies actually disclose it (opens a new window).8 The gap emphasizes Cantu’s point: Technology rollouts can be smoother and more successful when employees feel informed and included by leadership.
“Step back, engage all the right people, understand the fears, address them and design well before you kick them off,” she added.
A call for regenerative work
The human-centric tactics that speakers discussed tie into a concept Mattison introduced in his keynote address — one that may answer the question of what the to do with extra capacity that AI creates: Regenerative work.
Drawing on the concept of regenerative agriculture, regenerative work calls on organizations to create conditions in which employees leave work feeling more energized, connected and aligned, instead of drained and disconnected (opens a new window).9 “Humans are not machines to be optimized,” said Mattison. “We’re ecosystems to be tended.” In other words, as Morse put it, “let AI handle the repetitive, basic, kind of tactical things,” and leave the rest for expanded human capacity — the work that reduces burnout and turnover.
“We have to help [people] find vitality and their life force so that they can do their very best work,” said Mattison in his closing remarks. “Because when we restore capacity, we help people lean into the parts of us that make us uniquely human.”
Across trust building, employee retention and the adaptation of new technologies, the message was clear: In an AI-driven era, leaning into the unique human experience isn’t just a way to counter burnout — it’s a competitive advantage.
1 https://insights.lockton.com/healthcare-market-update/february-2026/6-key-trends-shaping-the-healthcare-industry (opens a new window)
2 gallup.com/workplace/313160/preventing-and-dealing-with-employee-burnout.aspx (opens a new window)
3 https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx (opens a new window)
4 https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx (opens a new window)
5 microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/2025-the-year-the-frontier-firm-is-born (opens a new window)
6 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202502.0056 (opens a new window)7 https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it (opens a new window)
8 pwc.com/us/en/library/trust-in-business-survey.html (opens a new window)
9 sethmattison.com/thoughts-blog-posts/regenerative-work-the-new-strategy-for-building-high-performance-cultures (opens a new window)