FOBO, the Fear of Becoming Obsolete Spreading Among Workers

There’s an acronym gaining ground in workplace vocabulary: FOBO, the fear of becoming obsolete. It’s not a clinical condition, but a widespread state of anxiety tied to a very concrete question: how many years of career actually remain before one’s role, or one’s skills, stop being relevant? A Gallup poll found that 22% of workers feel considerable fear about their jobs becoming obsolete, up from 15% in 2021. Over the same period, more than 72% of Fortune 500 HR leaders predicted AI would replace roles within their organizations over the next three years.

How Justified Is This Fear

An even more concrete figure comes from a study by MIT, which found that with AI technology already available today, 11.7% of the US workforce could be replaced, representing an estimated $1.2 trillion in wages across key industries such as finance, healthcare, and professional services. The study doesn’t guarantee that many roles will actually disappear, but the possibility remains real. The fear itself isn’t uniform: some worry about being replaced directly by the technology, while others have realised the real risk is being outpaced by someone who knows how to use it better.

The Temptation to Hoard Knowledge

One underdiscussed side effect of this climate is the tendency, among some employees, to hold onto their knowledge instead of sharing it, out of fear of losing an internal competitive edge. It’s an understandable reaction, but a counterproductive one: an organization that stops letting skills and knowledge circulate slows down exactly when it needs to adapt most. It’s a signal that anyone working on people development should catch early, before it becomes a structural feature of company culture.

What Companies Can Actually Do

Avoiding artificial intelligence altogether isn’t a viable strategy: companies that stand still risk simply falling behind competitors. Generic reassurance, likewise, no longer does much to ease employee concerns. The levers that actually work, according to the analysis, are different: investing seriously in training and reskilling, not just in the tools themselves; creating structured mentoring and reverse mentoring paths that let skills flow across generations; keeping constant communication with employees about AI adoption plans, to reduce uncertainty; clearly defining which skills actually matter for an “AI literate” profile, so it doesn’t become an empty label in hiring; and building genuine internal mobility paths, so people can see a future inside the organization, not only outside it.

The Direct Link to Talent Management and Assessment

Several of these interventions closely touch the areas we most often work on with companies: mapping the skills genuinely present within an organization, using solid tools to assess people’s potential against emerging roles, and building targeted development plans rather than generic ones. The question of which skills actually matter has no single answer that fits every company: it depends on the sector, the organization’s digital maturity, and its medium term strategy. That’s exactly the kind of work that makes an assessment and development process valuable before it becomes urgent.

Trust Remains the Starting Point

If artificial intelligence can, in theory, replace certain operational roles, the same holds for leadership positions poorly equipped to manage change. No job, aside perhaps from some manual or healthcare roles, can be considered fully safe, and that generates a widespread sense of uncertainty. But the most effective path remains bringing people along the journey, rather than leaving them behind: until the technology becomes truly autonomous and error free, it will be the workforce that keeps a company running. Working alongside people to secure the organization’s future never goes out of style.