One of the best things you can do for your 2026 bottom line is to listen to your workforce better. Not just cleaning out your ears to hear what they’re voicing, but giving them a forum to tell you what you need (but might not want) to know.

Operating almost exclusively for three+ decades in the labor-intensive service sector (healthcare, financial services, hospitality, education…), business partner Bill Catlette and I are seeing early, but unmistakable signs that the approaching AI-inspired white-collar downsizing is real. Resembling an F-5 tornado on the horizon; there’s nothing subtle about it.

While prepping the planning notes for an employee engagement survey feedback session we’ll soon have with a client executive relative to her fresh, chilly, (and bracing) employee opinion survey results, I happened to read Rachel Louise Ensign’s piece in the 12/16 Wall Street Journal, “Spooked by AI and Layoffs, White-Collar Workers See Their Security Slip Away.” Suddenly, one of the likely underlying causes of the steep period-over-period drop in our financial services client’s survey scores may have become clearer.

Forgive what might appear a naked sales pitch, but if you operate in the labor-intensive service sector and aren’t currently using workforce engagement surveys on a regular basis to gauge the mental/emotional state of your workforce, you’re taking a risk; not unlike ignoring the fuel or temperature gauge on your car, or the lab reports associated with your last physician visit (gulp). Give yourself a “present” and see to it that getting (and using) regular workforce feedback becomes a habit early in the New Year.