The last few weeks have been busy for layoffs, with organizations including American Express and British lender Barclays each announcing they were cutting 5% of staff. Both cited AI as playing a role in restructuring.

Yet, if new research bears out, some of these workers could be back. A study by SHL found that nearly one in five U.S. workers who report having been laid off or replaced by AI have later been asked to return to the same employer. The trend is more common in the U.S. than other locations; for instance, 1 in 8 U.K. workers report being called back after an AI-driven layoff.

Employees aren't just going to return without some pushback, the report found.

About half would expect a "significant" pay hike, and nearly as many would want "written job-security guarantees" along with more transparency about the role of AI in their work.

Lucy Beaumont, global senior vice president of product and design at SHL, said the share of employees affected by AI rebounding suggests many organizations are moving too quickly—making "fast, sometimes myopic, decisions about their people based on an incomplete picture of what their employees can do with or without AI."

"AI rebounding is what happens when a company automates a role before it has genuinely assessed the human capability inside it," she says. "The AI doesn't deliver, the gap becomes obvious and the business ends up rehiring the same experts they just let go of, at a far greater cost."

In the report, researchers caution HR that AI rebounding is an "early warning" of the dangers of simply substituting AI for people.

"Understanding skills, potential and the human contribution to work is critical before roles are redesigned or removed," they write. Comprehensive workforce planning—assessing human skills, experience and judgment—is critical, researchers say.

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