What AI ‘doom trolling’ means for workforce planning

“You can say, ‘I’m only trying to keep up with my competition.’ But there’s going to be more scrutiny about the consequences, not just on the workforce today, but also for the workforce of tomorrow.”

What investors are already pricing in

One of the more striking signals Jesuthasan cited came from Mercer’s 2026 Global Talent Trends report, which draws on perspectives from nearly 12,000 investors, C-suite leaders, HR leaders, and employees worldwide. According to the report, 97% of investors say their investment decisions would be negatively impacted by organizations that fail to adopt agile, skills-powered talent models. The investor view, he said, has shifted considerably.

“A couple of years ago, investors might have cheered on the CEO talking about deploying AI and perhaps eliminating the need to hire new people or reducing headcount,” he said. “Today there is this growing recognition that you can’t be successful with deploying AI unless you’re bringing the workforce along, unless you’re upskilling the workforce, unless you’re enabling that institutional knowledge that has been accumulated in the workforce to be retained and redeployed.”

Workers themselves are already registering that uncertainty. The same Mercer report found employee concern about job loss due to AI surged from 28% in 2024 to 40% in 2026, while 62% of employees believe leaders are underestimating AI’s emotional impact.

Planning at the task level, not the job level

One of the practical shifts Jesuthasan recommends is changing the unit of analysis in workforce planning entirely. Most organizations still plan at the job level. He argues they should be planning at the task and skill level instead.