AI-driven changes are pushing tech workers toward burnout
We’re seeing rapid AI development, especially with generative tools, reshaping how business gets done. Tech teams are on the front lines. This shift isn’t incremental; it’s massive. Roles are evolving faster than people have time to adapt. When that happens, stress piles up. Deadlines don’t get easier. Expectations keep rising. And workers are expected to constantly upskill without slowing down. I’ve seen it firsthand, this is not sustainable unless we do something about it.
Now add remote and hybrid work into the equation. Since 2020, flexible work setups have become normalized, but they blur personal and work boundaries in ways that hurt productivity in the long run. People check emails after dinner, join late-night calls, and never unplug entirely. That grind wears down even top performers.
Manu Sood, SVP of Technology at AvidXchange, put it bluntly: hybrid work environments make it harder to define limits. This blurring increases stress and, over time, breaks focus and drive. We need people sharp and engaged, especially now, but the system isn’t built for that, it’s built for speed.
The problem isn’t just emotional exhaustion. Disengagement kills creativity. Teams stop caring about pushing boundaries. You see it in meetings, cameras off, silent screens, no one challenging the status quo. Fiona Mark over at Forrester sees this often. She tracks the downstream signals. As she said, when a once-energized team starts agreeing too easily without real debate, that’s not harmony, that’s disengagement. It means employees are pulling back, no longer invested in outcomes.
This is a red flag. If you’re a business leader and your IT teams show these signs, you don’t have a project problem, you have an engagement problem. And no tech investment moves the needle if your top talent checks out.
Open communication and proactive support can help counteract burnout
The fix isn’t more policies. It’s more listening. You don’t prevent disengagement by throwing money at it or offering yoga Wednesdays. You fix it by giving people a voice, and taking that voice seriously. When communication flows both ways, you don’t need to guess how your team feels. They’ll tell you.
Ritu Jyoti, an analyst at IDC, made a strong point here: open communication isn’t a soft perk. It’s essential infrastructure. If people don’t feel safe sharing their doubts and frustrations, those frustrations worsen. Regular check-ins, real conversations, and follow-through from management, that’s how trust is built. Anything else is noise.
Fiona Mark at Forrester drives this point further. Managers need to listen more than they prescribe. Show up. Ask questions. Don’t rush to solve everything. Instead, create space for input. It gives your team room to own their experience and feel responsible for the outcomes.
Work-life balance doesn’t happen by accident. Leaders have to enforce it across the organization. AvidXchange’s Manu Sood tells her teams not just to take time off, but to use it. Let them recharge. Don’t let them hoard PTO like it’s a survival strategy. She’s also intentional about offering mental health resources and fostering peer connection through employee-led groups. It’s not fluff. It sustains performance.
You want a high-performance team? Start by protecting their energy. Give them autonomy, clear expectations, and space to reset. That’s how you build resilience into your workforce.
AI should be framed as a tool for empowerment
Let’s be clear, AI doesn’t eliminate talent; it amplifies it. If your team is afraid AI will replace them, you’re framing it wrong. The tech itself isn’t the problem. The messaging is. How leadership presents AI will shape how your teams respond to it. Create fear, you’ll stall progress. Present it as collaboration, and you’ll unlock new levels of engagement.
Daniela LaCelle, Head of IT Delivery at Unum, stresses that AI should be positioned as support, not competition. When employees see it that way, it reduces resistance and frees them to pursue more strategic work. Instead of worrying about being replaced by a bot, they begin thinking about how to achieve more with less friction. That shift in mindset is everything.
At CYE, Nimrod Partush, their VP of Data Science, makes it clear: AI is a productivity multiplier, not a cutback signal. When implemented right, it gives high-performing talent more leverage. It adds value to what the best people already bring to the table. No one’s talking about cuts. They’re talking about output that wasn’t previously possible.
Getting this right requires involvement. According to Fiona Mark at Forrester, leaders should bring employees into the AI integration process, early and often. You don’t drop a system on your team and expect magic. Make them part of the evolution. It builds alignment and removes fear from the equation.
Keyur Ajmera, CIO at iCIMS, went a step further and made AI fun, and useful. He introduced gamified challenges where employees “act like AI co-pilots” to solve real problems, such as image generation using prompt engineering. It wasn’t about theory, it was about practical application with visible, meaningful results. That kind of engagement creates lasting curiosity and forward momentum.
When employees explore AI hands-on and see how it unlocks potential instead of reducing relevance, everything changes.
Continuous learning and structured upskilling combat disengagement
If your people aren’t learning, they’re stagnating. That’s especially true in tech, where the pace of change doesn’t slow down. You’ve got two choices: train for what’s next or watch your teams fall behind. Upskilling isn’t a luxury, it’s survival. But survival doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, if done right, it energizes people.
Vishal Gupta, CTO and CIO at Lexmark, makes sure his teams stay sharp. He’s built a system that includes an internal AI Academy, a foundational AI course, and job rotation opportunities. Everything feeds into keeping people adaptable and relevant. And it’s not theory-for-the-sake-of-theory. These are practical paths that expand capability while reinforcing business value.
It’s the same approach at Cognizant. Prasad Sankaran, EVP of Software and Platform Engineering, leads their Synapse program, which by early 2024 had already helped over 195,000 employees gain advanced generative AI skills. That initiative has a bigger goal, train one million people. It’s simple: keep your people future-ready, and they’ll keep your company future-proof.
Sankaran is clear, burnout worsens when people stop growing. You replace that with learning, you give people forward momentum again. He’s also introduced non-traditional career tracks that align with modern demands, roles like full-stack engineer, site reliability engineer, or domain architect. These aren’t buzzwords. They’re substantial, well-defined paths for those ready to level up.
At RobobAI, CTO David Curtis balances urgency and growth by allocating “experimental” time. It’s structured space for employees to explore new technologies or creative solutions without immediate delivery pressure. That kind of time investment strengthens innovation muscle without sacrificing business focus.
For business leaders, the takeaway is clear: development must be structured, communicated, and funded. It’s not optional. When your top talent sees a way forward, one tied to skill building and real opportunity, they stay engaged, curious, and productive. They stop worrying about what AI will replace and start thinking about what they’ll build with it.
Recognition and personal growth are critical motivators for tech teams
Most companies overestimate the impact of compensation and underestimate the value of recognition and meaningful development. The truth is simple, top engineers and tech leads want their work to matter. They want to grow, solve harder problems, and know their effort isn’t invisible. If you only rely on pay to motivate, you’re leaving influence and loyalty on the table.
Eric Stavola, VP at Visual Edge IT, gets this. His strategy is built around practical development, not empty theory. He’s built short, targeted micro-courses that focus entirely on real-world skill application. No fluff. Engineers get training designed to solve today’s problems fast.
But Stavola doesn’t stop there. He replaces the “management” mindset with coaching. That means giving consistent feedback, setting clearly defined paths forward, and treating growth as a process. It also means providing cover to fail in controlled environments. If people can’t experiment and recover, you don’t innovate, you stall.
Recognition is daily, not annual. Celebrating small wins is just as important as the big ones. Personal messages, shoutouts during team meetings, and mentor time matter more than one-off awards. Especially in roles where success often looks like nothing breaking, visible acknowledgment is fuel.
This goes deeper than just feeling good. It changes how people view their value to the company. When you tie recognition directly to impact, strategic outcomes, customer success, improved systems, employees start thinking bigger. They grow for the right reasons. They push harder. The ambition becomes internal.
Manu Sood, SVP of Technology at AvidXchange, applies this by rewarding extra effort with time off. It’s straightforward and immediately valuable. Your people work hard, you let them rest. That signals respect and builds long-term commitment.
For leaders, the takeaway is tactical: growth plans must be measured, recognition must be structured, and both of those must tie directly to business value. When people see that their development equals real impact, they stop looking elsewhere.
Deepening IT’s role as strategic business partners increases engagement
If your tech teams don’t feel connected to the business mission, they won’t give you their best. High-functioning IT isn’t about maintenance, it’s about transformation. You get there by making your technologists direct contributors to business strategy.
At Lexmark, CTO and CIO Vishal Gupta has taken the lead on this. He gives his IT staff access to customer advisory boards and engagement opportunities where they interact with actual users. This gives tech teams visibility into how their work performs in the field, not just in test environments. It also builds an understanding of customer pain points, aligning daily work with real outcomes.
The result: tech employees stop coding in the dark. They work with purpose because they see the direct link between their output and customer results. Gupta also encourages role rotation within the organization. It broadens knowledge and reinforces cross-functional thinking. When your IT people understand the business side, collaboration improves, and the walls between departments come down.
Recognition also plays a role here. At Lexmark, internal wins are shared company-wide. It’s not just a pat on the back, it’s visible proof that what engineers do changes outcomes. That kind of feedback loop sustains energy and strengthens collaboration.
There’s another shift worth paying attention to. Gupta noted that tech teams are now experiencing demand from the business, not just instructions. The board, managers, and other departments are pulling IT in to co-develop solutions. That’s a major transition from the old model where IT had to persuade the business to adopt new tools.
For executive leadership, this shift is an opportunity. When your tech teams become true partners, not just internal vendors, you get better collaboration, greater speed, and clearer alignment with your company’s goals. Innovation becomes iterative. Delivery becomes faster. And your top tech talent starts showing up because they know their voice matters.
A holistic engagement strategy is most effective
If you want consistent engagement from your tech teams, you don’t choose just one lever, you pull all of them. Training without recognition falls flat. Recognition without real opportunity quickly turns into noise. Community without growth won’t retain ambitious people. When done in isolation, none of these things are enough. But when delivered together in a structured, intentional way, they build sustainable momentum.
Daniela LaCelle, Head of IT Delivery at Unum, understands this well. Her approach focuses on three key elements: continuous learning, clear career progression, and internal community. Learning is embedded into how the team operates, not something done when time allows. Progression isn’t ambiguous, it’s mapped. And community is built through mentorship, shared goals, and acknowledgment of both team and individual wins.
This strategy isn’t just about culture. It supports performance. It reduces churn. It creates alignment across org functions. When employees understand where they’re going, how they’re growing, and who’s invested in them, they stop viewing work as transactional. They build real motivation, personal and professional.
For executive leaders, this means investing in leadership that knows how to scale each of these areas thoughtfully. Internal training programs, structured coaching, visible recognition systems, and cross-functional collaboration aren’t “nice to have.” They’re foundational. They give employees touchpoints that connect their role to something meaningful and forward-facing.
If any one piece is missing, it undermines the others. When you get all three working, skills development, recognition, and culture built on shared value, you create an environment where top-tier talent stays engaged, adapts to change faster, and contributes consistently to business outcomes.
The return on this kind of engagement isn’t just higher morale, it’s faster execution, better collaboration, and stronger innovation pipelines. If you’re serious about keeping your people and moving fast, this is the structure you build.
Recap
You can’t afford to lose focus on your tech teams, not now, not with what’s coming. AI is rewriting workflows, skills, and expectations in real time. That creates pressure, and your best people feel it first. The companies that win here won’t be the ones chasing every new tool. They’ll be the ones building environments where talent stays sharp, engaged, and fully aligned with business outcomes.
That means treating burnout as a leadership issue, not just an HR metric. It means making continuous learning part of the operating model, not an afterthought. It means putting recognition and career clarity on the same priority level as delivery deadlines. If your IT leaders can’t answer what’s next for their team members beyond the current roadmap, you’ve got a problem.
This isn’t about short-term hacks. It’s about long-term capacity. The people closest to your technology are the ones shaping your future capabilities. Give them a reason to stay, grow, and push boundaries. Otherwise, you’ll spend more time rebuilding teams than reinventing products.
The path forward is clear: structure, purpose, and leadership that actually leads.
