Human Capital Intel - 6/25/25
Executive AI communications | The infinite workday | Second jobs | Your brain on ChatGPT | Broken performance evaluation
Welcome to the latest edition of Human Capital Intelligence, your weekly brief synthesizing over 250 leadership, HR, and people sources to filter out the noise. As always, we would love to hear from you at ken@reyvism.com with questions you’d like answered or topics covered.
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By Ken Stibler; Powered by Reyvism Analytics
Deep Dive: Amazon's memo exposes the AI communication contradiction
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent shockwaves through corporate America this week with an unusually direct memo to employees: generative AI will lead to fewer jobs. While tech leaders typically couch workforce predictions in diplomatic language, Jassy's blunt assessment—delivered to a company that's already cut thousands of positions—represents a new level of executive candor about AI's employment impact.
But the memo also highlights a growing contradiction that's undermining AI adoption: executives are simultaneously pushing employees to embrace AI tools while threatening them with replacement.
Jassy devoted fourteen paragraphs to AI's impressive potential, then acknowledged in the fifteenth that transformation will "likely reduce the overall size of our corporate workforce."
Beyond Amazon, JPMorgan's consumer operations head assured investors that AI would help cut staffing by 10%, while Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke requires managers to prove that vacancies couldn't be filled by algorithms before opening recruitment.
"Many employees think, 'This is my future robot replacement. Why should I help train the tool that will take my job?” — U.S. Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling
The result is predictable: fear rarely accelerates change, it fuels anxiety and erodes the trust necessary for successful transformation.
This contradictory messaging is both a warning and an opportunity. Companies that continue the "adopt AI or else" messaging will struggle with employee resistance, slower implementation, and talent flight to organizations with more thoughtful approaches.
The smart play is transparent communication that acknowledges AI's workforce impact while clearly articulating the company’s commitment to affected employees through transition, retraining, or new role creation.. Solving the communication paradox fast will have significant competitive advantages in both AI adoption speed and engagement.
The infinite workday trap
The modern workday has become an endless hamster wheel, and new research from Microsoft reveals just how broken our relationship with work has become. The average worker now faces 275 interruptions per day…one every two minutes. Workers start checking email before their feet hit the floor, with 40% already scanning their inbox at 6 AM, processing some of the 117 emails and 153 Teams messages they'll receive that day.
The workday no longer ends at 5 PM. After-hours meetings are up 16%, nearly 30% of people are back in their email by 10 PM, and PowerPoint edits spike 122% in the final 10 minutes before meetings. This isn't just about work-life balance—it's about the fundamental sustainability of how we organize human effort. The irony is that AI, which should be solving this problem, is often making it worse by layering new tools onto broken workflows.
Quote of the Week: The "Godfather of AI" on job displacement
"I'd say it's going to be a long time before it's as good at physical manipulation, so a good bet would be to be a plumber…For mundane intellectual labor, AI is just going to replace everybody."
— Geoffrey Hinton, former Google neural network expert and "Godfather of AI," on which types of jobs are most at risk for AI displacement
Reading List:
Cognitive debt from AI assistance
New research from MIT reveals that when people used ChatGPT to write essays, 83% couldn't quote a single sentence from work they'd completed just minutes earlier. The study introduces "cognitive debt"—borrowing against future thinking ability for short-term convenience. The timing of AI assistance matters: using AI as a refinement tool rather than a replacement for initial thinking can actually enhance cognitive capacity…good luck convincing employees of that though.
Leaders don't trust their own performance evaluation systems
Only 29% of senior leaders report that they trust how their company evaluates employee performance, according to new research from Acorn. Even more concerning, 80% of leaders say employees must quit to advance, suggesting that internal mobility and development systems have fundamentally broken down. When leaders don't trust their own evaluation systems, they can't make informed decisions about development, promotion, or retention.
Americans turn in droves to “overemployment”
New research reveals that nearly half of American workers are considering getting a second job amid economic insecurity and the lingering effects of inflation. A problem with little visibility and no clear playbook for overburdened managers, HCI will be putting out a leader’s guide to overemployement in the coming weeks as we hear more stories and more frustration at how to handle what’s looking like a durable trend.
Data Point: Hired, with a side of chips
75%
The decrease in Chipotle’s time-to-hire after implementing AI
In Other News:
Nearly a quarter of Americans are 'functionally unemployed,' highlighting a major crack in the labor economy. (Fortune)
Young Graduates Are Facing an Employment Crisis: Slow hiring is especially daunting for those just starting out. (Wall Street Journal)
Mark Cuban says work-life balance is a luxury ambitious people can't afford because 'there's someone out there working 24/7 to kick your ass'. (Fortune)
Immigration crackdown fears hit white-collar offices as companies prepare for potential workforce disruptions. (Axios)
AI Use at Work Has Nearly Doubled in Two Years, but implementation challenges persist across organizations. (Gallup)
Connections beat credentials, according to 70% of workers, highlighting the continued importance of networking in career advancement. (HR Dive)