The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in organisations has stimulated debate about people’s and entities’ readiness to embrace and exploit this disruptive technology. However, bibliometric analyses of the literature on AI in relation to employee outcomes have not been produced. The current bibliometric study aimed to map out this field of research using the PRISMA 2020 declaration and analysed 212 eligible Scopus-indexed journal papers and reviews published between 2020 and 2026 using VOSviewer (version 1.6.20). Various analysis were performed, namely, citation, co-authorship, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence analyses. The results demonstrate that research on AI’s effect on employees has proliferated exponentially after 2024, with the majority of papers producing highly skewed citation distributions, a prevalence of single authorship over international and interdisciplinary collaboration, and the emergence of five clusters: AI adoption and organizational digital transformation, organizational behavior and human capital management, employment, sector-specific AI impact, digital readiness, and employee well-being and ethics. Additionally, the co-citation analysis identified four integrative domains that underpin the current body of research on AI and employees: methodological literature on strategic management, AI-enabled human resource management, occupational stress and well-being literature, and technology acceptance and future-of-work economics. Our findings provide a conceptual groundwork for future empirical studies and a conceptual framework for organisational interventions for managerial psychologists, human capital development professionals, and organisational change agents.