The Art of Storytelling in the Digital Era: Leveraging Narrative Strategies for Effective Employee Engagement in AI-Powered Workplaces

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of storytelling in AI-powered workplaces as a strategic, ethical, and contentious practice through the view that the mediated or generated AI narratives are not neutral engines of engagement but rather organize organizational reality, voice distribution, and create trust. The study draws in the results of the literature concerning corporate storytelling, digital internal communication, AI-mediated communication, and trust in AI to establish a critical narrative framework using a secondary qualitative design. The synthesis reveals that the richness of the narrative communication and self-coherent stores in values may make the identification and engagement more profound, whereas digital platforms and AI technologies can broaden the reach, regularity, and responsiveness. Nonetheless, it also demonstrates that, in the case of automated storytelling, templated or over-orchestrated storytelling, through chatbots, recommender systems, and generative AI, engagement becomes performative, not relational. Messages inspired by AI have a tendency of standardizing their tone, concentrating the control of the narrative, in addition to softening the distinction between human and synthetic voice, especially in highly emotive “we care” and culture communications. Further empirical research on the use of AI as an author, conversational agents suggests that authenticity and trust are easily lost when automation is on route or perceived. Governance efforts are still made with a focus on efficiency and transparency as well as clarity of roles with little attention to narrative form, authorship, plurality, and consistency with lived experience. The article suggests that AI-driven storytelling is to be considered as the piece of discourse with ethical and political implications, posing the question of whose stories are promoted, how inclusion and opposition are defined, and whether machine narratives support or destabilize the current power structures. It ends by giving practice-based suggestions to organization, system designers, and regulators to bring AI-enhanced storytelling and real, one-on-one employee interaction together.