Building the AI Powered Workforce: Inside Salesforce’s Strategy for Agentic AI Adoption

In a recent survey, nearly half (48%) of all desk workers said they are uncomfortable admitting to their manager that they used AI for common workplace tasks.  

Agentic AI, unlike its assistive predecessors, marks a significant leap in AI capabilities, promising to redefine work as we know it. But it also presents unique challenges, requiring organizations to rethink their approach to technology adoption, workforce training, and even organizational design. 

Embracing proactive AI agents, software that can work behind the scenes without constant human oversight, requires more than just deploying new technology. To foster a seamless, collaborative environment where humans and agents work side by side effectively, organizations must in fact weave these digital workers into the fabric of their culture, clearly communicate about their benefits, and prepare employees with the skills to be successful. 

Building a culture of experimentation

A culture of experimentation is essential for driving widespread acceptance and maximizing the benefits of agentic AI.

For Salesforce, that started with Chair & CEO Marc Benioff. At Dreamforce 2024, Benioff declared Salesforce would lead the transition into the agentic AI era, committing to a culture that embraces collaboration between human and digital workers. This signaled to employees that they could — and should — be learning and experimenting with Salesforce’s own digital labor platform, Agentforce. At record speed, the technology was deployed on Salesforce’s own support page, help.salesforce.com.

Our digital labor force is resolving tens of thousands of customer service inquiries, freeing our human employees to focus on the most nuanced issues and customer relationships.

Marc Benioff, Chair & CEO, Salesforce

“We’re seeing some amazing results on Salesforce’s Customer Zero [effort] for Agentforce,” said Benioff. “Our digital labor force is resolving tens of thousands of customer service inquiries, freeing our human employees to focus on the most nuanced issues and customer relationships.” 

Getting employees comfortable with agentic AI at work comes from the top-down and the bottom-up, said Irina Gutman, RVP of Global AI Practice – Professional Services at Salesforce.

“You also want to identify your change agents, those who advocate for the technology from within,” she said. “It’s not just my boss telling me that it’s good for me. It’s my friend and colleague who I respect who’s sitting next to me saying, ‘You know what? This is really cool. You should try.’” 

Communicating the value of agentic AI

Transparent communication with employees about the purpose and benefits of digital labor is also critical to fostering acceptance.

Gutman suggests focusing on the upsides of automation. For example, in a customer service context, many service reps are answering simple, repeatable questions that represent a high percentage of cases. Automating a workflow so a rep doesn’t have to continually answer the same repetitive question may lead to employee satisfaction. 

“Any human would love to stop answering that same question, because it’s not intellectually stimulating. It’s noise,” said Gutman. 

Bernard Slowey, SVP of Digital Customer Success at Salesforce, who helped lead Salesforce’s Agentforce implementation, recommends bringing employees in early and clearly communicating the scope and benefits. “You need to show employees what’s in it for them,” he said.  

Prakash Kota, CIO of Autodesk, which is using agentic AI to augment its customer service operations, suggested gamification can help motivate employees to support agentic rollouts. 

“When we gamify and incentivize, it creates healthy competition between employees wanting to be in that wall of fame and wanting to make sure that their names are recognized,” he said during a recent episode of Salesforce’s CIO Corner. 

When we gamify and incentivize, it creates healthy competition between employees wanting to be in that wall of fame and wanting to make sure that their names are recognized.

Prakash Kota, CIO, Autodesk

Kota acknowledged there will be employee skepticism but said his organization has been able to counter that by sharing the wins and value digital coworkers bring every day. 

“Employees initially were concerned about agentic AI being a cost-cutting exercise,” he said. “When we started capturing metrics like first call resolution or call deflection, that gave a lot of comfort to employees wanting to lean in and adopt some of these capabilities.” 

Bridging the skills gap: Preparing the workforce for agentic AI

As AI agents take on more responsibilities, employees’ roles will evolve, demanding new skills and competencies to effectively collaborate with their digital coworkers. To navigate this shift, companies need to invest in reskilling and upskilling initiatives, equipping their workforce with the knowledge and tools to thrive in this new environment. 

Salesforce, for instance, has identified the top 10 enterprise skills needed in the agentic AI era to help employees be successful. In addition to technical skills focused on agents — like agent and AI literacy and human/agent collaboration — Salesforce is placing more emphasis on developing ‘human’ skills like adaptability, accountability, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. ‘Business’ skills like problem solving, data interpretation, creative thinking, and storytelling remain priorities as well. 

Lori Castillo Martinez, EVP of Talent Growth & Development at Salesforce, emphasizes the importance of reskilling in this new era: “You can’t address what you can’t measure. So at Salesforce, we’ve set a goal to enable at least 80% on these skills by the end of 2025. And, we’re supplying the technology and opportunities to hone them.”  

This range of skills is important to develop — both to get work done, and to feel engaged at work. Said Mick Costigan, VP of Salesforce Futures, “there’s a lot of meaning-making that happens at work. Making tough, values-driven leadership decisions or subjective judgments, or assessing risk is central to both personal and community identity.” 

By embracing reskilling as a strategic imperative, organizations can empower their employees to navigate the changing landscape of work, ensuring they remain relevant, engaged, and future-proof in the age of agentic AI.

The future of work is agentic and human 

Agentic AI is not just a technological advancement; it’s a catalyst for a new era of human-AI collaboration. To successfully navigate this shift, organizations must prioritize the human factors alongside the technical ones.‌ This involves fostering a culture where employees feel empowered, not threatened, by AI’s potential.

“Companies should begin the hard but important work of thinking about what it takes to preserve and strengthen their culture in a world where more tasks can be automated and offloaded,” said Costigan. “Success in the AI era will depend on leaders who can adapt, stay focused on building better customer and employee relationships, and manage tradeoffs to build businesses that are not just more efficient — but also more human.”

Go deeper:

• Hear more from Salesforce’s Head of Growth and Development on the skills gap and how her team is working to overcome it
• Read why digital labor is set to reshape the enterprise