Welcome to The People Insider — a weekly brief for anyone who employs people in South Africa.
Every Wednesday: one headline, one tool, one leadership story, one stat and one question. Under five minutes. No fluff. Let's get into it.
01 — THE HEADLINE
AI might just have doubled your human employees’ value
Globally, nearly half of the 78,000 tech worker layoffs in the first four months of 2026 were attributed to AI. But pundits expect around 55% of them to regret it real soon.
Why? Well, many companies are firing people for AI capabilities that don't exist fully yet (not to mention recent reports that AI tokens are becoming more expensive than human employees). And many might find themselves looking to hire those people back again.
Execs, when they realise the 30k people they just fired were their biggest asset…
One economist puts this bluntly…
University of Chicago economist Alex Imas wrote a new essay that Fortune called "a rare reason for hope." His point: when AI makes production cheap, the human element (trust, judgment, relationships) becomes scarce.
And scarcity is where the real value lives.
In SA, we don't have to theorise about this. Jack Hammer's Advaita Naidoo said it last week: "Rather than reducing headcount as AI boosts output, people can be redirected to additional projects or new growth areas." SA leadership hiring remains robust. Business confidence, not AI disruption, is still driving hiring decisions here.
But that won't last forever. And the companies that figure out redeployment now will have a head start.
What redeployment actually looks like
Your developer who's been writing code for five years knows your product, your clients and your culture. AI can only write the code. What it can't do is sit with a nervous client and make them feel heard and valued. So that human developer, with all their humanness and relational value, might be your next best customer success lead.
Your HR coordinator, who processes leave forms all day, has relationships across every department. AI can take over the task of processing the forms, but it cannot build years' worth of relationships or coach a struggling manager through a difficult team dynamic.
Naidoo again: "In roles that still require nuanced judgment, stakeholder navigation and relationship-building, [AI replacement] risks stripping away hard-won expertise and institutional memory."
South Africa has 118,000 unfilled tech jobs, so we don't have a surplus of talent. But with AI, we have a misallocation of it. Not to mention when AI start spilling over into other fields.
And for SA employers already navigating Section 189 consultation requirements, the principle is familiar: You can't dump the cost of your strategic bets onto your people.
WHAT TO DO NOW
Pick one role you've been thinking about automating. Before asking "can AI do this?", ask "if AI did the operational part, what could this person do that AI can't?"
That's where your competitive advantage lives. And your people already know this conversation is coming. Show them they're the asset, not the cost.
02 — TOOL OF THE WEEK
One tool shaping how people work
AI MEETING INTELLIGENCE
Otter.ai sits in your meetings so your managers can actually be present
Otter joins your meetings, transcribes in real time, auto-generates summaries and action items, and lets you search across every conversation you've ever had. It works with Zoom, Teams and Google Meet.
This way, the humans in the room can be fully present instead of taking notes. And there are free plans available for testing it out.
03 — LEADERSHIP STORY
China just ruled that companies can't fire workers to replace them with AI
The Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court published a case last week where a company automated a quality assurance supervisor's role with an AI large language model. When they tried to reassign him with a 40% pay cut, the employee refused, so they fired him.
To be fair, training the AI to do it right cost a fair bit, too…
The court ruled the dismissal unlawful. AI replacement doesn't constitute a "major change in circumstances" under Chinese labour law. And a separate Beijing ruling in December said the same thing: Companies that adopt AI are making a competitive choice, and they can't shift the risk of that choice onto employees.
"While companies may benefit from AI-driven efficiency gains, they must also bear corresponding social responsibilities. AI replacement does not automatically justify terminating a labour contract."
The question worth sitting with: Of course, no equivalent protection exists in the US, the EU or SA. But we all know this is the direction most regulation is likely to go. So, ask yourself: would your current AI strategy survive this test?
04 — THE STAT
23%
is the percentage of tasks where AI is de facto cheaper than human workers. For the other 77%, humans are still the better deal. Meanwhile, Uber's CTO has already blown through the company's entire 2026 AI budget on token costs, and an Nvidia VP told Axios that compute now costs his team more than their salaries. So, is AI actually cheaper?
Source: MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2025
05 — EVENTS
What’s coming up
12 MAY 2026 – CONFERENCE
HRWorks HR Conference, JHB
Held at The Leonardo in Sandton, this is one of the biggest in-person HR gatherings of the year. Practical sessions on talent, ER and the changing legal landscape.
14 MAY 2026 – ONLINE COURSE
Employment Equity Committee Training
A LabourGuide course on the Employment Equity Act and how to use it as a positive force for development in your company.
Got an event SA employers should know about? Reply and tell us.
06 — QUESTION OF THE WEEK
If AI could do 80% of your team's tasks tomorrow, what would you redeploy your people to do?
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