By Heidi Jaros, MSOL, SPHR — November 6, 2025

More and more employees, friends, peers and network connections are telling me the same story. They are burned out. Not just because they work too much (that’s a topic of its own for another day) but also because the work they are doing feels boring and pointless. They spend hours every day on low-value tasks that rarely tap into their strengths. The spark that once kept them motivated has dimmed. If I’m being totally honest, I can relate to this sentiment. I recently left my own corporate career to reignite my love of work because the day-to-day was just not bringing me joy and meaning.

These stories reflect a deeper problem that many organizations face. According to Gallup’s most recent State of the Global Workplace report, only 31% of U.S. employees are engaged in their work, the lowest figure in nearly a decade. The cost is not just cultural. Gallup’s research also shows that companies with highly engaged employees outperform their peers by up to 23% in profitability and 18% in productivity. At the same time, new fears are emerging among workers about what AI means for their future. A 2025 Stanford Digital Economy Lab study found that while workers are generally optimistic about AI’s potential, 23% fear it could cost them their jobs.

So why does this matter? Because we’re standing at a defining moment. A once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape not just how we work but what work feels like. With thoughtful adoption and clear communication, AI can reduce fear and turn anxiety into energy. It can shift our focus from what drains us to what drives us, freeing people from the repetitive and routine to make space for work that’s more creative, strategic and human.

The Opportunity: Reengaging People in Meaningful Work

Year after year, research on employee engagement finds that opportunities for growth and development are among the strongest predictors of engagement. Gallup identifies “opportunities to learn and grow” as one of the five essential elements driving workplace engagement. Similarly, the World Economic Forum reports that prioritizing learning and career mobility has “a major impact on employee retention, engagement and overall business performance.”

When people talk about AI and employee engagement, the conversation often centers on analyzing survey data and developing enterprise-wide engagement programs. But the real opportunity is more personal than that. It’s about how work can feel lighter, more creative and more fulfilling to individuals. It’s about giving people the chance to do what they do best more often and to grow in ways that feel authentic, not predefined by an enterprise-wide engagement program.

Additionally, the traditional career ladder, built for a world where roles stayed relatively stable and progress meant moving up one rung at a time, has already been on the decline. In their book The Squiggly Career, Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis describe how modern careers are no longer linear. Skills are evolving so quickly that rigid ladders don’t fit the pace of change. What we need instead are careers that flex, ones that encourage exploration, learning and reinvention. AI accelerates that shift. As AI takes over more repetitive tasks it’s creating room for people to explore new skills, shape their own paths and reimagine what growth looks like.

When used intentionally it becomes a tool for career agility. AI helps people learn faster, prototype ideas and test new ways of working without waiting for permission or promotion. The question isn’t “How do I move up?” anymore. It’s “What can I build, learn or improve next?”

How to Harness AI for Your Own Growth

Use AI to expand your current role: When AI removes low-value tasks, use the time it frees to take on new challenges. Learn a new skill, lead a project or volunteer for work that stretches your strengths. The most successful employees in the years ahead will be those who use AI not to do less but to do more of what matters.

Learn in real time: AI can be your personal learning accelerator. Use it as a thought partner to explore new ideas, get feedback on your writing or presentations, practice coaching conversations or brainstorm creative solutions. Curiosity and experimentation are the new career currency.

Spot and shape new roles: As AI transforms business models it’s creating roles that didn’t exist even a year ago. Don’t wait for someone else to define them. Pay attention to how client needs, team workflows and data use are changing and propose new ways you can add value. Many of tomorrow’s most interesting jobs will start as ideas from people who saw a shift early and leaned into it.

Build visibility around your growth: Share what you’re learning. Talk openly with your manager about how AI is changing your work and where you see opportunities to contribute. This builds trust and positions you as someone who leads through change rather than fears it.

Actions Leaders Can Take to Leverage AI for Employee Engagement

Technology alone doesn’t transform culture. People do. The same human-centered practices that drive engagement are the ones that make AI adoption sustainable. Here’s how leaders can make it work across teams and enterprises:

Connect tech and people early. Involve HR, frontline workers and team leads in design sessions so that the tool fits the work and the work is redesigned for higher value.

Lead with purpose. Frame AI as an enabler of meaningful work. Link it explicitly to the organization’s mission, values and to each individual’s sense of contribution and fulfillment.

Reward experimentation and skill building in non-traditional ways. While compensation and recognition always matter, the rewards that truly drive engagement often come through growth and connection. Consider pairing employees who are excelling in AI adoption with mentors or leaders who can help advance their careers. Collaborate with them to design new, business-aligned roles that leverage their emerging skills and give them career-building visibility, such as AI transformation lead or adoption committee project roles. You can also invest in external training or professional association memberships to build on their momentum. These types of rewards not only sustain engagement but also strengthen retention and capability across the organization.

The Future of Work Feels Personal Again

The AI tools we’re already seeing in action—the copilots, content generators and workflow automators that are boosting productivity and revamping how teams operate—represent only the tip of the iceberg. These tools are showing us what’s possible when technology removes friction from work, but the real opportunity lies in what comes next: giving employees the time and space to love their work again. AI isn’t just another productivity tool. It’s a chance to design more interesting careers, more energizing workdays and more meaningful professional lives.

By Heidi Jaros, MSOL, SPHR — October 3, 2025

Think about the people you know who are crushing it with AI right now. Are you more likely to hear them say:

• “My boss said we really need to start integrating AI.”
• “Our CEO is really pushing this AI thing.”
• “I’d better figure this out or I might lose my job.”

Or do they sound more like this?

• “I just made the coolest thing with ChatGPT today!”
• “I was playing around with Claude and figured out something wild…”
• “I cannot believe what AI can do—it’s going to make my job so much easier!”

Exactly. It’s the latter.

Take a scroll through posts by AI experts and influencers like Allie K. Miller and Ruben Hassid. What do you see? Curiosity. Tinkering. Discovery. You won’t find feeds full of dire warnings or cascade-style OKR templates. They’re filled with experiments, hacks, and “holy cow, look at this!” moments.

So why, when we bring AI into the workplace, do we put on such serious faces?

The Power of Play

Think about the last time you picked up a new hobby. It started with a spark of interest. Something caught your attention, made you curious or looked fun enough to try. You gave it a shot. At first you stumbled but then you began to see progress. That progress pulled you in deeper.

Now you weren’t just dabbling—you were invested. You had spent time, built some skill and maybe even shared your progress with others. And here’s where it really sticks: the incentives kick in. You feel the confidence of improvement, the pride of winning small victories and maybe even the satisfaction of getting a tangible reward like placing in a contest or race. Suddenly it’s not just something you dabble in. It becomes part of your habits, part of your identity and part of your joy.

That is exactly how AI adoption works. Curiosity sparks practice, practice fuels personal investment and the rewards along the way make people want to keep going—not because they have to but because they want to.

Experimentation and play are not frivolous. They are the foundation of adoption. When people feel free to try, stumble and share without judgment, they build confidence, creativity and momentum. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety shows that teams innovate faster when people trust that mistakes will not be punished. Tim Brown, cofounder of IDEO, has long argued that play at work is not about being silly, but about creating the freedom to experiment, suspend judgment and explore possibilities without fear of being wrong. His work shows that playful mindsets open the door to curiosity and discovery, which are essential for innovation.

Creating space for this kind of play sends a powerful signal. It tells employees they are encouraged to explore, that curiosity matters and that failure is part of the process. Think of your team as a mini lab where it is safe to test, learn and laugh together.

For AI Adoption, Play Beats Traditional Cascade OKRs & Project-Based Change Management Models

The truth is these methods are just too slow to keep up with the pace of change. AI capabilities are changing rapidly, yet many organizations default to old cascade methods and complicated change management programs for adoption. Senior leadership writes a grand vision, then pushes down OKRs, strategic frameworks and multi-step change plans. That may have worked when changes were slower and more predictable. Today it’s a bottleneck.

Recent change research from Gartner shows that change is more successful when employees and managers are equipped with strong “change reflexes” (skills and instincts to adapt), not when change is imposed top down. When executives try to micromanage or overly design every AI project, approval cycles slow. Things get stuck in planning. Teams wait. Momentum stalls. But when you focus first on play, on sparking ideas, getting people confident, surfacing use cases quickly and linking those to real metrics (productivity, quality, efficiency), you get a faster feedback loop. You move from “wouldn’t it be cool” to “wow we just saved 15% time on this” quickly.

Advice to Senior Leaders: Know Your Role

Senior leaders play a critical role in AI adoption, but it is not about prescribing detailed solutions. Their job is to be vocal champions of AI, weaving it into the company’s strategic priorities and making clear that it matters. At the same time, they must avoid being overly prescriptive.

The most effective support comes from creating the conditions for adoption to thrive. That means committing real time, resources and enablement at the line manager, team and individual level. Some actions you might consider to show your support are:

• Consult with your People team. People teams are where your best skills for change management, adult education and employee engagement live. Top experts are advising organizations to have their People teams lead adoption efforts and so should you!
• Enable line leaders. Conduct workshops to get line leaders comfortable with AI themselves. Provide them with facilitation tools to run their own team workshops and experimentation and idea-sharing cadences. If your leaders are having fun and loving the tech, their enthusiasm will naturally cascade to their teams.
• Be the spark. Drop into team meetings or all-hands to highlight quick AI wins and make it clear you want exploring AI to be fun.
• Fuel the fun. While your line leaders are inspiring their individual teams to play and practice with AI in ways that are specific to their jobs and needs, you can sponsor enterprise-wide hackathons or challenges that give the best ideas organization-wide recognition (and cross-pollinate great ideas across team lines to boot!)
• Back the winners. Put real money, headcount and tech support behind the pilots that prove impact so they scale quickly.

In short, senior leaders should provide vocal support, but lead by enabling bottom-up results rather than issuing top-down mandates.

Play Your Way Forward

AI adoption is a culture shift, not a checklist. If you want your teams to take this seriously, give them permission to play. The more fun they have exploring, the faster they’ll turn play into progress and progress into real impact.

Start small and keep it practical. For example:

• Write and tell fairy tales. Ask your team to write a “fairy tale” about what their ideal job or workday would look like if they could slay the administrative, efficiency and other annoying dragons that keep them from doing the work they love most. It’s a fun exercise that can uncover some of the best AI use cases for your team and get them excited to experiment with AI to solve for them.
• Set aside “play time.” Encourage people to block an “AI Power Hour” or put “AI Playtime” on their calendars each week for free exploration. Make that time sacred and remove other, low-value work from your team’s plate so they can focus without feeling burdened by experimentation.
• Create “buddy systems” to encourage collaboration. Creative problem-solving often benefits from more than one mind focusing on an idea. Ask your team to buddy up to experiment on a specific use case together.
• Keep the spark alive through sharing. Build space into team meetings or standups to share messy experiments, quick wins and lessons learned. First, focus on celebrating curiosity. As the team gets more comfortable, start calling out more measurable business impacts.

When leaders create space for playful experimentation and managers encourage it at the team level, adoption stops being just another mandate and starts becoming part of how work gets done. Play your way forward and you’ll discover that the fastest path to serious results begins with having a little fun.

By Heidi Jaros, MSOL, SPHR
September 24, 2025

"My biggest fear is that we'll put all of this [tech] in place, and no one will use it…that they'll just keep doing things the way they always have." This was the main concern a client recently shared with me when discussing the implementation of new AI-enabled software at her company. With a recent MIT report showing that 95% of AI pilots fail to deliver impact, it's a valid fear. And it's not a new issue. In 2020, a Boston Consulting Group report found that only 30% of digital transformations were successful. Both reports highlight the critical role enabling leaders (especially at the middle management level) and adopting new ways of working at the team and individual level play in successful transformations.

Adoption Is Like Learning a New Language

I started my career teaching English as a Second Language in Sicily. Heading there, I believed my Italian was solid. I passed all the exams, I had a degree and I had visited Italy a few times. When I arrived, however, I could barely hold a two-minute conversation without struggling. Real proficiency didn't come from my studies; it came from living the language: practicing daily, making mistakes and working not just to speak, but to think in a different language.

As an English teacher, I also knew that's exactly how language teachers build fluency. They use the 3 Ps:

• Presentation – Introduce the new words or concepts.
• Practice – Give structured, guided opportunities to try them out.
• Production – Move into real conversations (role plays, task-based learning, topic-based discussion) where learners apply skills freely until they become second nature.

Since returning from Italy, I've spent nearly two decades helping companies navigate major transformations, coaching leaders through tough people challenges and deepening my expertise in adult learning and leadership effectiveness. What I saw in the classroom holds true on teams: lasting change happens when managers create space for their people to practice, make mistakes and build confidence together in real work situations.

That's why I created the 4 Ps of AI Adoption model. It takes the 3 Ps of language learning and extends them with an additional first step (Pick) because in organizations, the tools you select matter just as much as how you introduce and embed them. Each stage of the model: Pick, Present, Practice and Produce, reflects not just theory, but my lived experience guiding teams and leaders through change.

Here's the short version:

• Pick – Choose AI tools with the frontline in mind. Don't select in a vacuum. Involve managers and end users so the tools solve real problems.
• Present – Train people in ways that stick. Go beyond "what the tool does" and show "what this tool helps you do." Make it role-specific and grounded in real work.
• Practice – Create safe, structured space for experimentation. Weekly "AI power hours," buddy systems, and small shared challenges build both skills and confidence.
• Produce – Move from trying to embedding. Standardize successful use cases, measure impact in terms of time saved or quality improved, and celebrate wins (big and small) so habits take root.

Why People Teams Should Lead

Tech teams bring the tools, but it's people teams and line managers who know how habits are built, how culture shifts and how to make learning stick. We've done this before with learning initiatives, performance management and culture transformation. AI is simply the next arena where developing change reflexes, safe practice and human-centered adoption matter most.

AI won't transform your business. Your people will. The organizations that succeed won't be the ones that just roll out AI. The winners in the AI race will be the companies that make it part of daily workflows, empower teams to practice, drive AI-supportive cultures and measure real impact. That's what the 4 Ps of AI Adoption are all about: turning AI from a shiny pilot into lasting fluency.

Contact us for a free AI Adoption in 4Ps Quick Guide: info@enableworkconsulting.com