Do I Still Matter Here?

The Question AI Is Raising at Work.

As AI changes jobs and reshapes the future of work, employees may be asking a much deeper question than whether their role will survive: Do I still matter here?

Leaders are hearing plenty of questions about AI right now. What jobs will change? Which skills will matter? What work will be automated? What should employees learn next? Who should we hire?

But beneath all of those questions is a more personal one your employees are likely asking, and it deserves leaders' attention.

Do I still matter here?

For generations, work has provided more than a paycheck. It has given people tangible evidence that they're needed. You show up and someone relies on you. Your experience matters. You're the person people call because you understand the customer, know the history, or can solve a particular problem.

Over time, that becomes more than a collection of responsibilities. It becomes part of your professional identity and sense of purpose at work.

As AI changes the workplace, that relationship is changing too, and I think some organizations are dramatically underestimating the human impact.

AI Is Changing More Than Jobs

Some of the people most exposed to AI automation may be the same employees organizations have historically valued most: the reliable ones, the people with deep institutional knowledge, the person everyone turns to when something needs to get done.

Then, seemingly overnight, technology can perform a meaningful portion of the work that made that person valuable.

The organizational response is often to focus on reskilling and upskilling, and that matters. But reskilling answers one question: what can I do next? It doesn't answer the more human question: why am I still needed? Those are two very different things.

Your Most Experienced Employees May Have the Most to Lose

This is where I think leaders need to be particularly careful.

Work has traditionally given people daily proof of their relevance: someone needed their expertise, their judgment, or simply their ability to get something done. As generative AI transforms jobs, some of that proof is becoming less obvious, and the people deciding which tasks to automate are rarely the same people whose identity was built around doing that work exceptionally well. Leaders see efficiency. The person doing the work may see part of what made them valuable disappearing.

An employee who has spent 15 years becoming exceptional at something has invested more than time. They've built expertise, relationships, confidence, and an identity around knowing how to do that work well. Then a technology arrives that can accomplish part of it in seconds. That's not simply a workflow change, and telling that person they'll now have time for “higher-value work” doesn't make the transition easier if nobody has defined what that higher-value work actually is.

You can't remove someone's old source of value and assume they'll automatically understand their new one. Their value may now be in their judgment, their relationships, or their ability to recognize risk. Those capabilities didn't become worthless because a task became automatable, and human judgment may matter even more as AI takes on more execution. The challenge is making sure employees, and their leaders, recognize it.

Reskilling for AI Isn't the Whole Answer

There is enormous focus right now on the AI skills employees need for the future of work. It's an important conversation, but it can't be the only one. Leaders should also be asking: what do our people already know that we can't afford to lose?

Experience doesn't always show up neatly on a skills inventory. Someone who has spent years working with customers may recognize a problem long before it appears in a dashboard. An experienced manager may hear something in an employee's response that signals a larger issue. A longtime team member may understand exactly why a strategy that looks perfect on paper failed the last three times someone tried it.

That's not resistance to change. That's organizational knowledge.

In over 20 years of leading these conversations with leadership teams, I've watched this play out from both sides. I've seen leaders roll out a reskilling plan and assume it was enough, then watch their best people quietly disengage because nobody ever answered the question underneath it: why do you still need me? I've also seen leaders get this right, and watched what it does for trust and retention when someone finally does.

The goal shouldn't be choosing between AI capabilities and human experience. It should be understanding where each creates the most value, and building the future workforce around both.

The Relevance Conversation: three questions leaders should be asking right now

As organizations navigate AI transformation, I think leaders should spend less time reassuring people that everything will be fine and more time helping them understand how their contribution is evolving.

1. What knowledge are we at risk of losing?

Before automating a function, identify the experience, relationships, judgment, and institutional knowledge embedded within it. You may be eliminating a task while unintentionally eliminating something much harder to replace.

2. Have we defined what “higher-value work” actually means?

If AI is going to free people from repetitive work, employees need to understand what they're moving toward, not simply what they're moving away from. Give them a clear picture of how their experience contributes to the organization going forward.

3. Do our people know why we still need them?

During periods of organizational change, employees need more than a new list of responsibilities. They need clarity about where they create value and why that contribution matters.

The Human Side of AI Transformation

The organizations that navigate this well won't simply be the ones with the best technology or the most people trained on it. They'll be the ones that understand changing the work also changes the person doing it.

Technology can redefine what someone does. Only leadership can determine whether that person still sees a place for themselves in what comes next.

That's the question I help leadership teams work through: not just how the work is changing, but whether the people inside it still believe they matter here. Most don't say it out loud. That doesn't mean they're not asking it.

About me: I love working with leaders to navigate transformation within their organizations. Let me know how I can help you at karengilhooly@karengilhooly.com.