The Buffering Role of Workplace Mindfulness: How Job Insecurity of Human-Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Impacts Employees’ Work–Life-Related Outcomes

Currently, employees are not being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), but they are facing increasing pressure to adapt and master new AI-related skills—regardless of their attitude to AI collaboration. Drawing on the job demands–resources model (JD-R) and Probst’s (2002) framework, we explain how and when job insecurity related to human–AI collaboration (HAI-C) influences employees’ tech-learning anxiety and subsequent work–life-related outcomes. Additionally, we examine whether workplace mindfulness can mitigate the negative effect of HAI-C job insecurity. We conducted an online experiment (study 1: N = 226) and a three-wave lagged survey (study 2: N = 350) with Chinese employees who daily work with AI. Our results show that HAI-C job insecurity positively relates to HAI-C tech-learning anxiety and subsequently affects employees’ creative performance, informal field-based learning, well-being, and psychological health. Workplace mindfulness played a crucial role in mitigating the negative effect of HAI-C job insecurity on tech-learning anxiety. Specifically, for employees with higher workplace mindfulness, the indirect effects of HAI-C job insecurity on work–life outcomes through tech-learning anxiety were weaker. Our findings have significant implications for both theory and practice concerning HAI-C systems.