By Carson Hostetter
Burnout is rising fast, especially among younger workers, and businesses are paying the price in retention and productivity. To address it, employee experience must be treated with the same weight as customer experience. AI is the enabler here: by stripping away admin-heavy tasks and unifying communication, it frees employees to focus on growth, impact, and purposeful work.
Stress and burnout have the potential to become a workplace epidemic, especially for younger employees and the next generation of workers. In fact, 83% of Gen Z frontline employees report burnout at work, with over one-third saying they’d quit because of it. For businesses, this isn’t just a wellbeing crisis; it’s a risk to retention. This comes as research shows that to replace a salaried employee it can cost, on average, between 6-9 months’ salary.
This is why the employee experience (EX) must be more than an individual or HR concern. Employees, particularly Gen Z and younger millennials, expect employers to support balance and growth, not just through benefits but by rethinking how work itself gets done.
As a result, EX is increasingly discussed as a business priority, but in practice, it is too often subordinated to productivity metrics. While many companies invest heavily in crafting exceptional customer experiences, they often overlook the internal experience of the very people delivering them. That imbalance leaves EX undervalued in leadership metrics and is coming at a cost, in productivity, engagement, and retention.
It’s time for things to shift. Companies that treat employee experience as a core metric, just like revenue or customer satisfaction, are better equipped to retain talent and build resilient teams.
AI presents an opportunity – a new way for employees to reshape their careers, particularly for the next generation of workers.
AI as a career path launcher
In many businesses, roles have become overly consolidated, with junior team members or those starting their careers (often Gen Z), taking on extra admin tasks outside their remit, such as answering phones, logging information, or manually updating systems. These added duties dilute their real contributions, slow career growth, and contribute to burnout.
With tools like AI-powered receptionists, transcription and smart routing, those admin-heavy “extra hats” can finally come off. Instead of being stretched across multiple mismatched responsibilities, the next generation of workers can focus on higher-value contributions: solving complex customer issues, developing their skills, and growing strategically in the roles they were hired to do.
For SMBs especially, this challenge is magnified. With leaner teams, employees are often stretched across responsibilities that fall outside their core role. AI eases this pressure, resulting in employees with more focused roles, where they can thrive.
In this way, AI is helping to unlock people’s full potential. It rebalances the scale to ensure EX isn’t sacrificed for output but enhanced through meaningful work and accelerated growth. And when employees grow faster, they deliver stronger customer experiences, creating a reinforcing loop between EX and CX that futureproofs the business.
AI as the equaliser
At the heart of any positive employee experience is clear, consistent communication. Yet historically, creating a great employee experience required bespoke support, including different systems for frontline teams, hybrid workers, and multilingual teams.
Our data shows that employees spend 62 days per working year toggling between apps with 56% of workers using 6 or more business apps to communicate. This not only makes internal alignment or moving at pace with hybrid or remote teams particularly tricky, but it makes scaling that infrastructure harder.
However, AI is changing that. Modern AI-powered communication platforms unify channels, from phone calls to chat and video meetings, into one ecosystem, removing friction and eliminating the “tool-hopping” that leaves employees feeling scattered and stressed. Meetings are summarised, action items flagged, and updates shared instantly, without anyone manually piecing it all together.
Crucially, AI makes this scalable. This keeps frontline staff connected on the go, hybrid teams get smart notifications and instant summaries, and multilingual colleagues collaborate seamlessly with real-time translation. The same level of access, clarity, and support is available to everyone, regardless of role or location — levelling the experience across the workforce.
Borrowing from CX to design EX Â
For years, customer experience has had the boardroom’s full attention. Companies map every touchpoint, anticipate needs, and use data to remove friction before it appears. Ironically, that same rigour is rarely applied to employee experience, even though the people delivering CX are employees.
The tools that personalise customer journeys, surface relevant information, automate repetitive steps, and prioritise what matters most, can be turned inward. Intelligent systems can guide employees through processes, pre-empt bottlenecks, and equip them with the right context in the moment they need it.
For instance, an associate supported by AI Agent Assist. Just as CX tools surface the next best step for a customer, EX tools surface the next best action for the employee, delivering real-time product details, customer history, or inventory without the employee breaking focus. In sales, AI tools can also apply the same principles, such as analysing conversations to provide personalised coaching, so employees continuously improve with clear, data-driven feedback.
When EX is implemented with the same care as CX, it creates a reinforcing loop: employees feel confident, supported and able to focus on meaningful work rather than struggling with complicated systems. AI becomes the enabler that helps them scale their impact without adding complexity and guides them in the moment. The result is agents who are less stressed, more effective and more motivated in their roles, which in turn strengthens the organisation as a whole.
Future-proofing the workforce isn’t just about flexible working hours. It’s about redesigning work so EX and productivity reinforce each other. When EX is treated with the same discipline as CX, employees grow faster, moving from admin-heavy tasks to higher-value work that builds skills and confidence. With AI as an enabler of this transformation, organisations can redesign work for the future. Every role is more purposeful, every customer call is answered, and every employee has room to grow.
Carson Hostetter
