In March, a software company announces it is “reshaping the organisation around AI” and cuts 6% of its staff. A smaller round follows in June. In September, the chief executive tells an all-hands meeting there are “no further plans at this time”. In October, two teams merge and several roles quietly disappear.
Priya, a senior analyst, has not lost her job, but she has not had a normal week since March. She checks the directory each morning to see who has gone, keeps her CV open in another tab and has stopped volunteering for the AI pilot, suspecting it is how her role will be measured for removal. Her manager sees a reliable performer gone quiet. Priya sees a queue, and does not know where she is in it.
Writing on layoffs usually concentrates on the moment someone is told and the aftermath. Much of the damage happens before either. When cuts arrive in a steady drip, and every AI announcement is read as a possible headcount announcement, the whole workforce lives in anticipation. This guide looks at the psychology of that waiting state and what managers can do about it.
Threat can hurt more than the event.
Prolonged uncertainty carries its own costs to health, performance and trust.
Rolling cuts keep the threat switched on.
Each small round resets the clock, so people never reach the point of recovery.
Managers are the main buffer.
Explanation and honest timelines reduce insecurity more than reassurance does.
What is happening in 2026?
Two trends have converged. The first is the “forever layoff”. In July 2026, HRD reported on companies spreading cuts over months in small rounds, citing Microsoft’s further 4,800 role reductions alongside record AI infrastructure spending, and cuts at Cisco and Cloudflare amid record revenue. Outplacement firm LHH found 87% of HR leaders surveyed had recently made layoffs or planned to within a year. This month alone has brought reports of cuts at Aldi’s UK head office and Qantas outsourcing 850 roles.
The second is the framing of restructuring as AI transformation. When AI investment and job cuts arrive in the same quarter, employees draw the link, and everyday AI tools start to signal threat.
The surveys agree. ADP Research, surveying more than 39,000 workers in 36 markets, found that only 22% strongly agreed their job was safe from elimination. Confidence rose with seniority, from 18% of individual contributors to 35% of C-suite executives, so those deciding on restructuring feel safer than those living through it. In November 2026, HR Dive reported Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao’s warning of a “crisis of disengagement”, with anxiety about layoffs rising faster than layoffs themselves.
Analysing five years of Glassdoor reviews, financial data, announcements and earnings calls at US public companies, Ma found employee comments about AI were markedly more negative than reviews overall, with job security the dominant concern, and fell sharply after AI-linked layoff announcements. Employee sentiment towards AI was strongly associated with firm productivity; management optimism in earnings calls was not. He called AI-attributed layoffs “a self-defeating strategy”.
What is anticipatory job insecurity?
Leonard Greenhalgh and Zehava Rosenblatt defined job insecurity in 1984 as a sense of powerlessness to maintain desired continuity in a threatened job situation. Two parts matter.
It is a perception. Two people facing the same objective risk can feel very different levels of threat, depending on how they read the signals.
It is about powerlessness. It is the feeling that the outcome will be decided elsewhere, by people and criteria one cannot see.
Johnny Hellgren, Magnus Sverke and Katharina Isaksson later separated two forms. Quantitative insecurity is worry about losing the job altogether. Qualitative insecurity is worry about losing valued parts of it: interesting work, status, a team, a career path. AI restructuring produces both at once. Priya fears her role may go, or survive as a job checking a tool’s output.
Why waiting can be worse than knowing
It seems logical that losing a job is worse than worrying about it. The research is less tidy.
A meta-analysis linked job insecurity to lower satisfaction, commitment and trust, poorer mental and physical health and stronger intentions to leave. Longitudinal work in the United States, including a study by Sarah Burgard, Jennie Brand and James House (2009), has found that persistent perceived insecurity is linked to declines in health comparable to those associated with actually losing a job.
Three mechanisms explain why.
Uncertainty is itself a stressor. In a 2016 Nature Communications study, Archy de Berker and colleagues found people were more stressed when unsure whether they would receive an electric shock than when they knew for certain they would. An unresolved threat keeps the stress response running.
Coping needs a target. In Richard Lazarus’s appraisal model, people cope by assessing a threat and acting on it. Someone who has lost a job can grieve and start applying elsewhere. Someone who might lose it is caught between preparing to leave and trying to stay, and each strategy undermines the other.
Rolling cuts prevent recovery. Joel Brockner of Columbia Business School, quoted by HRD, notes that people remaining after a substantial layoff can stay demoralised for three to four months. Small rounds every quarter restart that clock just as people settle. He calls cutting all at once the lesser of two evils.
Leaders use this phrase because it is technically true. Employees hear a promise. When another round follows, it is remembered as a lie and every later reassurance is discounted; see the psychological contract.
What anticipatory insecurity does to behaviour
From the outside, anticipation looks less like distress than a set of quiet, rational adjustments.
| Behaviour | What it looks like | The logic behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge hoarding | Fewer handovers, undocumented processes | Being the only person who knows something feels like protection |
| AI avoidance | Slow uptake of new tools, sceptical pilots | “If I show it can do my job, I have written my own exit” |
| Risk aversion | No new ideas, no challenge to decisions | A mistake now could decide who goes next |
| Pre-emptive exit | Strong performers leaving between rounds | Better to leave on one’s own timetable than wait to be chosen |
The last row matters most. Wayne Cascio, quoted by HRD, points out that high performers “will always have options”. Those with the best prospects have least reason to sit through uncertainty, so rolling cuts tend to lose the people the organisation most wanted to keep. A Guardian report this month describes white-collar professionals leaving established careers for work they consider more secure, before any disruption reaches them. That is the pattern described in the unfolding model, with the next announcement acting as the shock.
AI avoidance is the most self-defeating for the employer: if successful experiments seem to cut headcount, the rational employee holds back.
Who feels it most
The ADP figures show insecurity falling with seniority. A Gallup analysis published in September 2026 by Christos Makridis, “Using AI more does not reassure workers, managers do“, found frequent AI users reported displacement concern at more than double the rate of less frequent users. Manager support mattered most for those with the fewest ways to reassure themselves: less seniority, fewer credentials, shorter track records. Survivors of earlier rounds may be more anxious, having seen how decisions were made.
What managers can do
Managers rarely stop a restructuring, but they strongly influence how much anticipatory damage it does.
Replace reassurance with information. People need to know what is decided, what is not and when they will hear more. “I don’t know yet, and I will tell you by the 20th whether our team is in scope” is more calming than “I’m sure we’re fine”.
Give a timeline, and keep to it. A provisional schedule turns an open-ended threat into a bounded one.
Separate AI adoption from headcount, if that is true. If tools are meant to change how work is done, say what happens to time saved. If they will reduce roles, say that too. The Gallup analysis found that explaining why AI is being adopted and framing it around team capability reduced fear; Glassdoor’s research, reported by HR Dive, found engagement 15 points higher where AI came with an explained integration plan.
Make the criteria visible. Much of the powerlessness comes from not knowing how selection works. Where consultation rules allow, explain how roles will be assessed; see organisational justice.
Notice the quiet. Withdrawal and silence are symptoms, not flaws. “How are you finding the uncertainty?” invites a more honest answer than “Is everything OK?”.
Do not promise anyone they are safe unless you can guarantee it. A broken personal assurance turns anxiety into betrayal. Consultation obligations may also limit what can be said before a formal process begins.
What leaders can do
Choose fewer, larger decisions. If cuts are unavoidable, make them in one considered round, and say the round is complete only if it is.
Count the hidden cost. Cascio found S&P 500 firms that only cut staff did not outperform competitors afterwards. Anticipatory disengagement and unplanned resignations belong in the same calculation.
Invest visibly in those who stay. ADP found that 53% of workers who strongly agreed their employer invests in them were fully engaged, against 12% of those who did not. Training and redeployment routes show people they have a future there.
Within 24 hours of any restructuring announcement, meet the team with three headings: what we know, what we don’t, and when we will know more. Put dates in the third column and revisit it until every item is resolved.
Delivery of the cut itself is covered in the termination conversation, and its aftermath in layoff survivor syndrome. Anticipation is the stage before both, and the one most organisations leave unmanaged.
Priya’s role survived the next round. She resigned three weeks later anyway, for a firm that had told her at interview exactly how its AI plans would affect her team. “It wasn’t that the news was good,” she said. “It was that there was news.”
Frequently asked questions
What is anticipatory job insecurity?
The stress of expecting to lose your job, or valued parts of it, before anything is decided. It is driven by perception and a sense of powerlessness.
What are forever layoffs?
Job cuts made in a series of small rounds over months or years instead of one reduction, which keeps the workforce in continuous uncertainty.
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