Rolling layoffs and AI restructuring keep whole workforces waiting for the next cut. Here is why anticipatory job insecurity can hurt more than the cut itself, and what managers can do about it.
Hr · Topic
HR Psychology
The psychology behind HR decisions: how hiring, pay raises, promotions, feedback, discipline and exits are experienced by the people involved, and what the research says managers should do.
- 36 guides
- 6 subtopics
- Updated Nov 12, 2026
Latest in HR Psychology
The AI Hiring Arms Race: Why Trust Is Collapsing on Both Sides
Candidates use AI to apply in bulk and employers use AI to screen and interview them. This guide explains why that arms race destroys hiring signals, erodes trust in both directions, and what managers can do instead.
Bossware Psychology: Why Employee Monitoring Backfires as Discipline
Monitoring software produces numbers that look like evidence, and those numbers are ending up in disciplinary files. Here is what the research says surveillance does to trust and behaviour, and how to use monitoring data without causing conflict.
Who Wrote My Review? The Psychology of AI-Assisted Performance Feedback
Most managers now use AI somewhere in the performance review, yet few employees are told. Here is why the same feedback lands worse when people think a machine wrote it, and how to use AI without hollowing out the review.
Conscious Unbossing: Why Capable People Turn Down the Promotion
More capable people are declining management roles. The psychology suggests most are not short of ambition but are reading a flatter, heavier manager job accurately, and organisations can respond by redesigning it.
Merit Differentiation Psychology: Who Pays When the 2027 Pay Pie Stops Growing
With 2027 pay budgets stuck around 3.5% and ‘peanut butter’ raises falling out of favour, the solid middle and long-serving staff absorb the cost of rewarding stars and new hires. Here is how they read it, and what managers can do.
All guides
The Psychological Contract: The Unwritten Deal Behind Every Resignation
Alongside every employment contract there is an unwritten one: what each side believes it has been promised. Most breakdowns in trust at work are breaches of that second contract.
Exit Interview Psychology: Why Leavers Don’t Tell You the Truth
Most exit interviews record “better opportunity” and “career growth”. The real reasons are usually different. Why leavers hold back, and how to design a process that gets closer to the truth.
The Termination Conversation: Ending Employment With Dignity
The dismissal meeting lasts a quarter of an hour and is remembered for years. Research on how people react to being dismissed, and a structure for doing it with clarity and respect.
Layoff Survivor Syndrome: The Psychology of Those Who Stay
Redundancy planning focuses on the people leaving. The people who stay decide whether the organisation recovers. What research shows about survivors, and how to look after them.
Why Employees Really Quit: Shocks, Scripts and the Unfolding Model
People rarely leave because satisfaction slowly ran out. More often a particular event makes them reconsider. Here is what turnover research says about why people quit and why they stay.
Workplace Conflict Psychology: Attribution Errors and Mediation
Conflict between colleagues usually begins when one person explains another’s behaviour by their character instead of their situation. A guide to the psychology and to mediating a dispute.