The future of work environment

: the impact of artificial intelligence in the employee’s levels of psychological safety

Abstract

With the rise of automation, observed already in cars and factories, the next step becomes working side-by-side with us humans amongst our working environments. This research focuses on the potential future of workplaces where humans work alongside AI, and how impactful these changes can be on the employees’ psychological safety (PS) at the company they work at. It reviews different aspects in terms of how people perceive both humans and AI in terms of social and intellectual traits and how impactful these perceptions can be to their PS levels. This study exposes participants to four different scenarios that consist in the addition of a new individual to their workplace. Each scenario differs from the other based upon two aspects: the type of entity that is added to the workplace (Human vs. AI); the position of the entity relative to the employee at the company (Colleague vs. Leader). The results suggest that although there is no direct significant difference on psychological safety between both types of entities, there is an indirect influence as different perceptions of these entities have an impact on PS. On the other hand, the position of the entity towards the self also has no significant impact, however, leadership has an impact on PS irrespectively of the type of entity. The findings are discussed and new research questions raised.

Date of Award	20 Oct 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Filipa Martinho de Almeida (Supervisor)