CEOs keep botching AI layoffs, losing trust
NEW JERSEY, UNITED STATES — Chief executive officer (CEO) empathy scores have fallen 16 points since 2022 to their lowest level since 2016 — a collapse Businessolver’s 2026 State of Workplace Empathy Report links directly to how AI-driven layoffs are being communicated, with only 68% of HR professionals now rating their CEO as empathetic, down from 84% in 2022, Forbes reports.
CEO empathy scores hit a 10-year low
The Businessolver 2026 State of Workplace Empathy Report found only 68% of HR professionals rate their CEO as empathetic with LEADx founder and CEO Kevin Kruse identifying the pattern as structural, not emotional, driven by a communication formula that pairs empathy with business rationale in a single breath and destroys the credibility of both.
Microsoft’s Xbox division cut 3,200 of a company-wide 4,800 jobs; GM ran scripted 15-minute HR meetings with no questions allowed — two cases Kruse examined as the pattern’s clearest examples of how workforce reduction communication can destroy trust faster than the layoff itself.
“Empathy that gets expressed and then immediately undercut is worse, in some ways, than no empathy at all,” wrote Kevin Kruse, founder and CEO of LEADx.
Separating empathy from business rationale is the fix
Kruse named the formula — ‘I know this is hard, but this positions us for the future’ — the single-sentence construction that pairs empathy with business rationale and destroys trust, as opposed to his Now-and-Next framework which requires addressing workforce impact first, then concrete support options, and only then the business rationale, each in a separate statement.
Xbox’s 3,200-person cut and GM’s scripted no-questions meetings represent the same underlying failure — communication designed to minimize legal exposure rather than human impact — a pattern that HR professionals and workforce management specialists have tracked as contributing to an empathy trust collapse that began well before AI restructuring accelerated.
A 16-point drop in CEO empathy ratings is not a measurement anomaly — it is the cumulative score of every AI-driven workforce restructuring announcement that led with ‘but’ instead of leading with people.
For BPO providers and offshore HR teams supporting US clients, the Businessolver data signals a direct opportunity — companies managing AI-driven headcount reductions need workforce communication specialists who can execute the Now-and-Next framework at scale.
Change management, employee communications, and transition support are where Philippine offshore teams have built delivery capability — and where their cost advantage over U.S. consultancies is most visible.
As AI restructuring continues and CEO trust erodes further, the clients that outsource workforce transition support now will be ahead of the demand wave — and the Philippine BPO providers serving them will be its primary beneficiaries.
