When the Job Changes Faster Than the Worker Can: AI, Shifting Job Demands, and the Growing Risk to Employees with Disabilities

How AI Is Changing Job Demands and What It Means for Employees with Disabilities 

Artificial intelligence and economic pressures are reshaping the cognitive and emotional landscape of work in ways that are not always visible in a job description or a performance review.  

While advances in technology are inevitable and necessary, we are in a workplace evolution that is moving faster than ever. Organizations are starting to see psychological impacts of these changes within their workplaces.  Those that respond proactively will retain capable employees, reduce disability costs, and be better positioned as workplace change continues to accelerate. 

The Rapid Transformation of Job Demands 

The jobs that employees were hired to do even two or three years ago look fundamentally different today. The tasks have changed. The complexity has changed. And for many workers, particularly those managing mental health conditions or cognitive disabilities, the gap between what the job now demands and what they can safely sustain is growing wider every day. 

Consider the call centre. Not long ago, a significant portion of daily interactions involved straightforward, process-driven tasks: updating an address, transferring funds, opening an account, reversing a transaction. These tasks were structured, predictable, and learnable. For employees managing disabilities, this structure often made the role manageable and a source of confidence and routine. 

That work has largely been automated. What remains (the calls that route to a human agent) are the calls that AI could not resolve. They are complex, emotionally charged, and arriving in an unrelenting stream. Customer verbal aggression, once an occasional part of the job, has become a daily reality. Agents are absorbing the frustration of customers who have already spent twenty minutes failing to get help from a chatbot. They are also increasingly required to do more in the same amount of time and to solve complex problems. 

There is a lot of research about the effects of AI changes on mental health and wellbeing. And there is a term for what many of these workers are experiencing. Researchers call it technostress. A review published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports1 identified five dimensions that are directly relevant to today's workplaces. Two of those are illustrated in the examples above: “techno-complexity”, the inability to keep up with new systems, and “techno-uncertainty”, the stress from constant, unpredictable change and evolution of demands. The review found these stressors accumulate over time, manifesting as anxiety, burnout, reduced job satisfaction, and physiological symptoms including sleep disruption and impaired judgment. Similar studies2,3  confirm these findings and highlight that continuous AI integration is intensifying pre-existing symptoms of vulnerable workers.  

Why This Disproportionately Affects Employees with Disabilities 

For employees with mental health conditions or cognitive disabilities, the impact goes beyond stress. Conditions such as ADHD, anxiety disorders, depression, and PTSD affect the very capacities now under pressure: sustained attention, working memory, emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and tolerance for unpredictability. Each technostress dimension compounds these challenges in specific ways. Techno-overload intensifies cognitive fatigue. Techno-complexity amplifies anxiety in employees who rely on predictable workflows. Techno-insecurity creates persistent background stress that erodes psychological safety. For employees already drawing on significant internal resources just to manage their condition at work, multiple simultaneous technostressors can push them past what they can safely sustain. 

There is also a compounding issue at the hiring stage. Research published in 20254 found that AI-based screening tools can systematically disadvantage candidates with disabilities, producing biased outputs when an organization's existing employee profile lacks disability representation. Workers who might have successfully navigated a traditional process are being filtered out before a human reviewer ever sees their application. 

What Organizations Are Missing 

The 2025 TELUS Mental Health Barometer5, drawing on surveys of 3,000 Canadian workers, found that 40 per cent face constant stress and 70 per cent report a recent decline in productivity linked to worsening mental health. This is the baseline. When job demands are simultaneously intensifying due to AI-driven change, the risk of psychological injury is not theoretical. For many workers, it is already happening. 

The gap has two layers. 

The first is awareness. Most organizations have not formally assessed how the cognitive and behavioural demands of their roles have changed. Technical training may have been updated, but the emotional and cognitive architecture of the role (what it actually takes to do this job safely and consistently) has not been examined. Managers are observing performance concerns and accommodation requests without understanding their root cause. 

The second is response. Mental health supports, including Employee Assistance Programs and wellness initiatives, are important but not sufficient. Effective management of technostress requires targeted interventions: technology training that builds genuine competence, transparent communication about how roles are changing, and access to supports before employees reach crisis. When the demands of a job are changing faster than the supports provided, you do not close the gap with a mindfulness app. 

A Better Approach: Accommodating Employees in an AI Landscape 

Assess the demands. A cognitive demands analysis examines the requirements of a specific role as it exists today, not as it was designed years ago. It identifies risk factors that would not appear in any performance metric or job description and is the foundation of proactive disability management in a changing workplace. 

Identify who is at risk early. Employees with cognitive or mental health conditions in roles with significantly elevated demands are at elevated risk of psychological injury. Early identification means not waiting for a formal accommodation request. It means managers knowing what to look for: changes in attendance, quality, engagement, or emotional presentation that may signal an employee is struggling. 

Make the path to support visible and stigma-free. Employees do not seek help until crisis, largely because they do not know what is available or fear disclosure. Leaders have a critical role in normalizing supports, whether that is upskilling, access to mental health professionals, or formal workplace accommodations. Organizations that manage this transition well are the ones that treat support access as a leadership competency, not a personal responsibility. 

Accommodate with specificity.  Functional workplace accommodations address the specific barriers created by the gap between what the job demands and what the employee can sustain. Occupational therapists are uniquely positioned to conduct this assessment, observing essential duties, employee abilities and limitations, identifying where barriers occur, and recommending practical, specific supports. 

How Gowan Consulting Can Help 

At Gowan Consulting, our occupational therapists specialize in understanding the functional demands of work and the impact of disability on work performance. We conduct cognitive demands analyses that reflect the realities of today's workplace and provide accommodation assessments that are specific, practical, and grounded in clinical evidence. 

If your organization is navigating a shift in job demands and you want to understand what that means for employees with disabilities, contact us or submit a referral to get started. 

[1] Kumar, P.S. (2024). Technostress: A comprehensive literature review on dimensions, impacts, and management strategies. *Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 16*, Article 100475. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958824001088 

[2] Jang, S., Lee, J., & Kim, B. (2024). The mental health implications of artificial intelligence adoption: the crucial role of self-efficacy. *Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11*, Article 1456. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-04018-w  

[3] Litan, D.E. (2025). Mental health in the "era" of artificial intelligence: technostress and the perceived impact on anxiety and depressive disorders. *Frontiers in Psychology, 16*, Article 1600013. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1600013/full 

[4] Fabeyo, S. (2025). Ensuring ADA compliance in AI hiring: review, analysis, and disability discrimination framework. *Issues in Information Systems, 26*(3), 32-44. https://iacis.org/iis/2025/3_iis_2025_32-44.pdf  

[5] TELUS Health. (2025). The state of mental health and wellbeing in Canadian workplaces: 2025 Mental Health Barometer. https://resources.telushealth.com/en-ca/mhi-barometer