Good morning. The digital workforce fueled by AI fundamentally changes how the work is accomplished.
“Today we have a job in our own organization which did not exist 60 days ago,” said Andy Valenzuela, existing vice-president and employee operating head at Salesforce, during fortune workplace innovation Summit last week.
The future of work is increasingly collaborative and dynamic, and will be increased by tools such as AI agents – autonomous programs that carry out tasks in the name of users, said Valenzuela. This obliges companies to rethink existing jobs, to invest in talents and to maintain organizational flexibility to accommodate agents, he said.
In four years, the automation of front -line workers has accelerated, said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co -founder of Phenom, an HR technology company during the session. The use of the automation of knowledge workers catches up is delay, he added. Change management can be a factor for many companies because they structure means to deploy AI agents.
However, many AI agents are already underway. The PWC May survey of 300 senior executives has revealed that 88% say that their team or commercial functions plan to increase the budgets linked to AI in the next 12 months due to the agentic AI. Similarly, 79% say that AI agents are already adopted in their business and, among these, two thirds report that they increase productivity.
While companies determine the best use cases to integrate AI agents into their operations, some leaders are struggling with a fundamental question: what should be automated and what still requires a human touch?
Bayireddi offered this analogy: “The agents are like ants.” Just as ants effectively manage repetitive and essential tasks, AI agents can take care of routine work which often drains the energy and commitment of employees.
You must continuously assess where AI agents can create efficiency and allow human talents to focus on greater value opportunities, said Valenzuela. He offered the example of Salesforce launching a wage planning system: “We have in fact built an agent who made all of these 11,000 people,” he said. Each manager could engage with this agent to learn the new system. Instead that his team focuses on the activation part, they could focus on more strategic work.
The main reason for the deployment of AI agents is to reach autonomy, said Bayireddi. He explained three types to consider: operational autonomy (automating specific tasks), functional autonomy (automated procedures in commercial units) and hierarchical autonomy (how agents are part of organizational power structures). The deployment of agents among the workers of knowledge requires particular attention to the hierarchy and the decision -making authority, because the organizational structure influences greatly where and how agents should operate, said Bayireddi.
At Salesforce, they build dashboards to balance workloads between agents and humans, said Valenzuela. Managers must learn to manage both agents and humans, he said.
However, the deployment of teams of agents in very complex industries, driven by income and regulated can be concern for some. It is a question of balancing innovation with conformity, of ensuring that the agents are integrated in a reflected manner in existing structures and the maintenance of confidence by transparency and strong governance, said Bayireddi.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
