🤖 53% of AI reviews are now negative

Hey HR Pros!

For years, employees have been cautiously optimistic about AI in the workplace. That just changed.

For the first time, more workers now describe AI in negative terms than positive ones.

This is a signal worth taking seriously. When adoption outpaces support, trust erodes, and employee reviews reflect what policies and communications have not addressed.

COMING UP

• 🤖 AI review mentions up 240% YoY, majority (53%) now negative for the first time ever

• 🏢 Target's new point-based attendance system: 12 points to termination, rolling out September 2026

• 💼 100% of CXOs in toxic cultures rate themselves empathetic leaders, yet those orgs have 2.6X more layoffs

• 🧠 Gen Z men take mental health leave at the same rate as Gen Z women (20%) for the first time in any generation

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 📰 Latest in HR News

• Ford admits to rehiring employees after its AI strategy proved to be flawed

• Meta’s AI training program sparks new employee data, trust concerns

• SHRM announces Center for Inclusion & Diversity, as companies transform diversity practice

• Fired Amazon worker alleges HR reopened a closed case to fire him

🤖 Employees have turned on AI at work, and the data proves it

For years, AI mentions in employee reviews were mostly positive. The conversation has shifted. Glassdoor's 2026 Midyear Worklife Trends report tracked how employees describe AI in their workplace reviews, and the picture looks meaningfully different from this time last year.

The speed of the flip matters as much as the direction, and leadership ratings are declining in parallel, pointing to a trust deficit that goes beyond any single tool rollout.

What the data says:

• 🤖 AI mentions in reviews jumped 240% year over year, reflecting how central AI has become to how people actually experience their jobs, not just a niche topic confined to tech roles

• 📉 53% of AI-related review mentions are now negative, reversing 2025 when 55% were positive and 41% were negative, meaning the majority flipped in under 12 months for the first time on record

• ⚠️ Leadership ratings fell below 3.5 for the first time since 2017, with mentions of "misalignment" up 95% and "disconnect" up 52%, suggesting AI frustration is tied to trust deficits at the leadership level

• 🔍 Negative AI sentiment appears concentrated in implementation gaps, pointing to the difference between deploying tools and actually preparing people to use them with adequate support and context

Read more: Glassdoor 2026 Midyear Worklife Trends Report

🏢 What HR can learn from Target's attendance tracking rollout

Attendance management is rarely simple, but a new approach from one of the country's largest employers offers a clear framework worth examining. Target is rolling out a unified, point-based attendance tracking system this September, replacing previous policies with a single model that applies consistently across its workforce.

The system is built around predictability, for employees who want to know where they stand and for managers who need to act on clear criteria.

By the numbers:

• 📋 Points accumulate on a defined scale: 0.25 for arriving 8+ minutes late, 1 for an unapproved absence, and 3 for a no-call-no-show, giving employees full visibility into consequences before they escalate to anything more serious

• 🚨 Termination is triggered at 12 points, a defined threshold that reduces inconsistency across locations and removes ad hoc managerial discretion from the equation

• 🗓️ Points expire after one year on record, building in a reset mechanism that rewards sustained improvement rather than permanently penalizing past behavior

• 📱 A new unified scheduling app accompanies the rollout, addressing a root cause of attendance issues by making shift information clearer and more accessible for hourly workers

Read more: https://www.thehrdigest.com/targets-attendance-tracking-system-to-keep-closer-tabs-on-workers/

[This Week] Why Employees Quit After the First Month (...and How to Set Your Team Up for Success)

In this webinar, we’ll break down the hidden factors that drive early turnover and explore how HR, payroll, and operations teams can work together to create a smoother first-week experience.

What You’ll Walk Away With

• Why employees disengage so early in the employment experience

• The connection between payroll issues and early turnover

• The real cost of turnover on productivity, morale, and manager time

• Common onboarding mistakes that create friction

• Improving communication during the first 30 days, and more.

💼 Leaders call themselves empathetic. Their organizations tell a different story.

Empathy has become a near-universal leadership value in corporate settings. The gap between claiming it and practicing it has never been more measurable. Businessolver's 2026 State of Workplace Empathy report found that C-suite leaders consistently describe themselves as empathetic regardless of what is actually happening in their organizations.

The consequences show up in both culture scores and business outcomes, often at the same time.

The practice gap:

• 💔 100% of CXOs in toxic cultures rate themselves as empathetic leaders, while 72% of those organizations' employees report a toxic environment, a fundamental perception mismatch at the executive level

• 📉 Toxic culture organizations have 2.6X more layoffs and 2X more benefit cuts than non-toxic peers, showing that self-assessed empathy does not translate into protective decisions when pressure arrives

• 💰 66% of employees would accept lower pay to work for an empathetic organization, making empathy a compensation-level factor in attraction and retention decisions

• 📊 40% of employees say their workplace is toxic, up 18 percentage points year over year, as C-suite self-ratings remain high, widening the perception gap further

Read more: Businessolver 2026 State of Workplace Empathy

🧠 Gen Z men are closing the mental health gap at work

For most of modern workplace history, men have been significantly less likely than women to take mental health leave. Among Gen Z, that gap has essentially closed. New research from The Standard found that Gen Z men now take mental health-related leave at the same rate as Gen Z women, something no previous generation has done.

A generation apart:

• 📊 20% of Gen Z men take mental health leave, matching the 20% rate among Gen Z women, compared to 14% of Millennial men and just 6% of Boomer men, a clear generational step change

• ⚠️ 20% of Gen Z men do not return to work after mental health leave, compared to 13% of Gen Z women, meaning a retention gap persists even after the access gap closes

• 💵 Mental health challenges cost organizations $1,488 per employee per year, making this a financial conversation as much as a wellbeing one

• 🔄 Gen Z men entering leadership pipelines carry different expectations about mental health support, creating an opportunity to normalize practices now that will matter more as this cohort advances

Read more: The Standard: Mental Health in the Workplace 2026