Source: CafeX

In San Francisco today, you can get a cup of coffee made by a robot barista, then walk past the headquarters of companies — Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest — that have disrupted the way work is done in industries as diverse as hospitality, taxi services, public transit, retail and more. If a robot can pour you a macchiato, what other jobs, even those we feel confident only humans can do, will soon be overtaken by technology? New results from the first CNBC/SurveyMonkey Workplace Happiness Index dig into workers' fears about technological change as they relate to job satisfaction. The overall index score of 71 out of 100 shows that workers are by and large satisfied with their jobs, especially in terms of how much meaning they derive from work, how much their colleagues appreciate what they do and how much autonomy they have at work. As robots continue to replace humans at some types of work, those three factors of workplace happiness could be particularly at risk. After all, how can your co-worker appreciate you if it's a machine? How can you control the tasks you take on or the way you do them if you're just one part of a big automated assembly line? Luckily, but perhaps also a bit naively, the survey results indicate that most workers today don't yet feel the threat of technological disruption.

Few people — just 7 percent — say they are "falling behind" at keeping up with technology and innovation at work. A majority (60%) rate themselves "about average," and nearly a third (32%) actually say they're "ahead of the curve." The few who are falling behind, however, have lower scores on those three measures mentioned above — recognition, autonomy and meaning — and, accordingly, a lower-than-average index composite score of 67. Young people perceive a slight advantage. Confidence relating to technology spikes higher among younger workers, with those ages 18 to 34 more than twice as likely as those ages 55 and up to see themselves as being ahead of the curve.

Similar data from the Pew Research Center show that automation and other technological changes haven't negatively impacted most workers. A majority (57%) say they've been unaffected by technological change, and more people say their careers have been helped by new technology than have been hurt. Looking forward, most expect this technological change to continue apace or even speed up. In a Fortune/SurveyMonkey poll conducted last year, 72 percent of people said they expect artificial intelligence to take away more jobs than it creates in the next 10 years. That's a lot of potential for disruption to the workforce, but it's hard for workers to look ahead to their own future of work with clarity.

The threat is a workplace stress creator