From Fear to Fluency: Cultivating AI Confidence and Socio-Economic Wellbeing in the Workforce

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Industry 5.0 emphasises human-centric, sustainable, and resilient digital transformation, in which technology augments human skills and wellbeing. While the integration of generative AI into workplaces is rapidly reshaping job roles, this study investigates how organisations can guide employees from AI-related fear to fluency, achieving confident, ethical, and psychologically safe engagement with AI systems, and proposes a contextualised diagnostic tool for measuring organisational readiness. A mixed-methods design was used. Quantitatively, 217 professionals from AI-adopting organisations completed a nine-item online survey measuring psychological safety, innovation climate, skill confidence, leadership communication, policy understanding, training efficacy, and adoption outcomes, analysed using descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations. Qualitatively, 15 semi-structured interviews with mid-level managers across French, Indian, and American operating contexts were deductively coded against six a priori dimensions and triangulated against the survey findings. Qualitative accounts converged with quantitative patterns on the centrality of leadership translation and the insufficiency of generic training, while showing partial divergence on how explicitly managers themselves name psychological safety as a lever. The study finally proposes the AI Readiness Scan, a six-dimension diagnostic (psychological safety, intercultural contextualisation, regulatory compliance, skill confidence, change resilience, and leadership AI readiness), each grounded in an established measurement or theoretical literature, to help organisations act on evidence rather than assumption before and during AI transformation. The findings bridge psychological safety theory, responsible AI governance, and international labour considerations into an integrated, actionable framework for managers and policymakers navigating AI-driven digital transformation.