AI job cuts: What HR leaders wish they knew first

In the last year, British companies reported that artificial intelligence had driven net job losses down 8%. Thousands of workers have found themselves out of work as companies rush to replace human roles with intelligence that promises to work faster, cheaper, and without lunch breaks. 

British telecoms agent BT became a poster child of the movement, announcing plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by the end of this decade, with around 10,000 of those roles handed directly to AI. In fact, a CIPD survey found that one in six companies expect AI to shrink their workforce, with desk-based, junior managerial, and administrative roles most at risk. 

However, the cracks are starting to show, as Careerminds’ latest report announces businesses are quietly reversing course, leaving HR teams tasked with rebuilding workforces.

What we did:

In February 2026, Careerminds surveyed 600 HR professionals who made redundancies in the last 12 months to understand the real impact of AI-driven restructures and whether organisations would approach those decisions differently today.

Over three in four HR professionals confirmed that in the last 12 months, their organisation has cut employees due to technological advancements like AI replacing roles and responsibilities. It was found that entry-level roles bore the brunt of the reduction, with approximately a third of HR leaders (31.5%) stating they were the most affected by AI layoffs in their company. Mid-level contributors followed at 15.6%. 

For all the confidence with which these decisions were made, only 8.4% of HR leaders stated their restructure delivered what was intended and would repeat the process unchanged. An overwhelming 9 in 10 (91.6%) of companies said if given the chance, they would approach things differently if given the chance. 

Many leaders, upon making roles redundant for automation, hoped to reduce the demand that comes with managing people. However, the data tells a more complicated story. When asked whether the replacement of roles with automation reached expectations, one in eight (12.3%) of companies stated that the problems caused by the layoffs outweighed the ones they solved. 

Nearly two-thirds of HR teams (66.1%) stated that some roles were successfully replaced with automation, but not all. Just 21.4% of respondents said AI fully replaced those roles with no operational issues. 

Reducing headcount is straightforward; however, the skills and expertise those workers carry have proven hard to replace with digital platforms. One in three HR workers (32.9%) stated redundancies resulted in the loss of critical skills and expertise, and more tellingly, 28.1% said the remaining workforce didn’t have the skills to fill the knowledge gap.

Most notably, 54.6% companies felt that the redundancies weren’t worth it, as they found that the technology required more human oversight than originally anticipated.

Forrester’s 2026 Future of Work outlook, released in late 2025, predicts that half of AI-attributed layoffs would be quietly reversed by 2027. However, our study finds that 32.7% of companies that have conducted AI-led redundancies in the last year have already rehired between 25-50% of the roles they initially let go. 35.6% of companies surveyed stated they rehired for more than half of the roles they laid off.

When organisations did rehire, they did so quickly. Just over half of HR leaders (52.1%) said their organisation rehired for previously redundant roles within six months, while a further 17.8% had already begun rebuilding their workforce within three months. Only 2.1% of companies waited over a year. 

The value of those roles has become clear in their absence, and unfortunately, workforce decisions made at speed can take longer to recover from. The speed of the reversal speaks for itself.

Replacing human roles with AI is widely known as a key way to reduce operational costs. But for a significant number of organisations, that logic didn’t stand up to scrutiny. 

Nearly one-third (30.9%) of organisations found that bringing those roles back cost them more than they ever saved by cutting them, leaving them financially worse off than if they’d never made the redundancies at all.  A further 42.4% broke even, with rehiring costs cancelling out any initial savings. Only 26.769% came out ahead.

What’s more, is that figure doesn’t account for hidden costs that don’t make it into a spreadsheet: lost productivity, declining team morale, and loss of institutional knowledge.

Over half (51.3%) of companies believe that up to a quarter of the individuals made redundant could have been transitioned to different roles within the organisation, with the right redeployment support in place. A further 28.3% of HR teams estimate that between 26-50% of roles had redeployment potential. 

However, for 55.1% of companies surveyed, reskilling and redeployment options weren’t formally discussed or considered.

When asked what would have improved their organisation’s approach to workforce restructuring, over half of HR leaders (53.8%) stated a better understanding of AI’s capabilities would have helped them make more informed decisions about redundancies. 

About two-fifths of companies (40.6%) said they would have benefited from better data on employee capabilities and skills, while 1 in 3 (33%) said the ability to model workforce-change scenarios before committing to them would have made a significant difference. 

What ties all these findings together is that the organisations that struggled most were making significant, irreversible decisions without a full picture of AI’s capabilities or the impact a reduction would have on their workforce. For organisations looking to avoid the same pitfalls, the starting point is understanding which roles are genuinely at risk, mapping existing skills across the workforce, and exploring redeployment before redundancy becomes the default.