Trust Barrier
Part Three of Our 2026 Prediction Series
If the first barrier to AI adoption is an uneven employee experience, the second is even more fundamental. Employees will not change how they work if they do not trust the organization asking them to do it.
Trust is the quiet variable leaders underestimate. In the NICH Employee Experience Framework, the single most important dimension we measure is Trust in the Organization, which includes transparency, communication quality, leadership integrity, and the belief that the company invests in its people in meaningful ways. When trust is high, employees stretch, experiment, and take risks. When trust is low, they retreat into self-preservation.
This dynamic shows up immediately in AI adoption.
Employees are being told that AI will make their jobs better, easier, more efficient. But many employees have heard these promises before. They lived through technology rollouts that created more work instead of less. They endured restructurings framed as “empowerment.” They remember when last year’s three-year strategy quietly disappeared. In low-trust environments, every new initiative enters the workplace with a credibility deficit.
AI is no exception. In fact, AI amplifies the trust issue, because it brings a layer of uncertainty that employees cannot resolve on their own. They want to know:
Will this help me or replace me?
Will my workload actually get lighter, or will expectations just increase?
Will leadership support the learning curve, or will they judge the people who struggle?
If employees cannot answer these questions confidently, they will not adopt AI no matter how powerful the tools are or how many training sessions you offer. They may experiment around the edges, but they will not integrate AI into the core of their workflow.
In high-trust cultures, adoption spreads organically. Employees believe leadership will support them, not expose them. They believe the investment in AI is part of a broader investment in them. They believe the organization is honest about what is changing and what is not.
In low-trust cultures, the opposite happens. AI becomes a symbol of instability rather than opportunity. Employees brace instead of build. Leaders confuse compliance with buy-in and wonder why nothing sticks.
When it comes to AI adoption, organizations that earn trust will move quickly. Organizations that ignore trust will keep announcing AI initiatives that never make it past the slide deck.
Next week, we will get into the mechanics of trust: how employees read signals, what leaders unintentionally communicate, and what it looks like to rebuild trust inside a workforce that has seen too many promises come and go.
SpeedStudio Podcast
EP. 123 - Cole Townsend, Running Supply
In this episode we dive deep into the world of running gear with Cole Townsend. We chatted how running gear stack up to cycling kits, who is leading the game in innovation, the influx of label slapping, why runners don’t wear matching team kits, the influence of Atlanta Track Club and Atlanta Run Club and the different cultures of running and riding in Atlanta vs. Boston.
Make sure to subscribe to Cole’s substack at Running Supply with Cole Townsend Running Supply to get his latest predictions, reviews and recommendations.
Links
OpenAI Is Asking Contractors to Upload Work From Past Jobs to Evaluate the Performance of AI Agents
THE EVENT TRENDS SHAPING IRL CULTURE
220,000 Fewer Workers: How Trump’s Cuts Affected Every Federal Agency