{"slug": "nine-in-10-uk-businesses-regret-redundancies-due-to-ai", "title": "Nine in 10 UK businesses regret redundancies due to AI", "summary": "A survey of 600 UK HR professionals found that 91.6% regret redundancies made in the last 12 months, with 75% saying the cuts cost more than they saved. Many organizations rehired for eliminated roles within six months, and 54.6% cited automation requiring more human oversight than expected. The findings highlight that AI-driven restructures often fail to deliver promised efficiencies, leading to lost expertise and higher costs.", "body_md": "# Nine in 10 UK businesses regret redundancies due to AI\n\n## 75% say the cuts cost more than they saved\n\nA survey of 600 UK HR professionals who made redundancies in the last 12 months finds that 9 in 10 (91.6%) would approach those decisions differently if given the chance, new research has found.\n\nThe data from [Careerminds UK](https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/6da62fbe8ab347e4ab1df8265865286c/11/4223e475744ec49ce0675fc41a5b6981797b5b0d48e2a6d4ad17323a77847ba5?cache_buster=1782374479) found that 75% say the cuts cost more than they saved.\n\nFor all the confidence with which these decisions were made, only 8.4% of HR leaders say their AI-driven restructure delivered what was promised and would repeat the process unchanged.\n\n**READ MORE: Peaky Blinders creator makes massive new 'world class' announcement for Birmingham**\n\nThat means nine in 10 would approach things differently if given the chance, with 41.2% saying they would overhaul their approach entirely, and a further 50.3% saying they would at least rethink which specific roles were cut.\n\nHalf of HR leaders (52.1%) said their organisation rehired for previously eliminated roles within just six months of making redundancies, while a further 17.8% had already begun rebuilding within three months. Only 2.1% of companies waited over a year.\n\nMany organisations discovered that the roles they had written off as replaceable were anything but.\n\nNearly one in three (32.9%) HR professionals said their organisation lost critical skills and expertise when employees were let go, and 28.1% said the remaining workforce lacked the skills to fill the knowledge gap left behind.\n\nOver half (54.6%) of organisations shared their regret stemmed from automation needing significantly more human oversight than anticipated, meaning the efficiency gains that justified the cuts in the first place never fully materialised.\n\nOnly 21.4% said AI fully replaced the roles with no operational issues, while 12.3% said the problems caused by the layoffs outweighed the ones they solved.\n\nWhen asked what would have helped, the top answers were a clearer understanding of what AI can actually do (53.8%), more data on employee skills (40.6%), and the ability to test workforce scenarios before committing to cuts (33%).\n\nThe organisations that struggled most were making significant, irreversible decisions without the full picture and are now paying the price.\n\nAmanda Augustine, CPCC, Resident Careers Expert, Careerminds UK, said: \"AI is a powerful tool, but it has never been a replacement for human judgement.\n\n\"When businesses stripped out the people closest to the work, they didn't just lose headcount — they lost the context, the relationships, and the instinct that no algorithm can replicate.\n\n\"The oversight burden that followed wasn't a surprise to the employees left behind. It was a surprise to the boardrooms that never asked them.\"", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nine-in-10-uk-businesses-regret-redundancies-due-to-ai", "canonical_source": "https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/uk-news/nine-10-uk-businesses-regret-34183591", "published_at": "2026-06-25 08:18:52+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 08:46:11.121760+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy", "ai-safety", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Careerminds UK", "Amanda Augustine"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nine-in-10-uk-businesses-regret-redundancies-due-to-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nine-in-10-uk-businesses-regret-redundancies-due-to-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nine-in-10-uk-businesses-regret-redundancies-due-to-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/nine-in-10-uk-businesses-regret-redundancies-due-to-ai.jsonld"}}