The digital workforce is happening! Very soon, humans will be working side by side with AI agents. Shaping and enabling this new form of collaboration in your organization will not just be a competitive advantage, it will be a competitive necessity.
This blog expands on what you can do to make sure your existing staff is ready to collaborate with agents. In addition, it outlines how to anticipate evolving needs in order to acquire talent in time.
Rethinking your workforce in the age of AI
Different skills, greater impact!
In today’s fast-moving business environment, deploying the right skills and talent in your organization is more than a scheduling problem—it’s about competitiveness. The question isn’t just “Who’s available when?” but rather “Do we have, and can we deploy, the skills and talent required to maximize impact, resilience, and value?”
Even though this has been on the radar of many enterprise leaders for a while, the challenge has grown considerably since AI agents have started to enter the workforce.
These agents can easily take over the routine and standard tasks of almost every role in your workforce but most of them need a human companion for supervision. How do you make sure not only that you have enough human companions, but that they have the skills to add value to agent intelligence?
The AI-driven shift
Almost all companies are investing in AI. In addition, over the next three years, 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments. Today, most deployments use AI in a simplistic way, primarily to assist with existing workflows and processes. Few organizations have deeply integrated AI within business processes and delivered game-changing capabilities.
Agentic AI is the force that can make real transformation possible, but it requires a strategy and a plan to successfully power that transformation. Agents are not simply magical plug-n-play pieces. They must work across systems, reason through ambiguity, and interact with people—not just as tools, but as true collaborators. That means leaders must ask the question:
“How do we want humans to engage, work, and perform in an environment in which software can decide and act?”
The potential is huge but so are the risks. We are all aware of the security risk posed by AI that has uncontrolled autonomy. However, when it comes to our workforce, the glooming risk is two-fold:
- First, social unrest and morale issues can arise among people, who may the fear their irrelevance among their new AI colleagues. This fear can arise among people who feel they lack the skills that would justify the need to keep a human in the loop.
- Second, teams may completely lack new skillsets and roles that are needed to successfully deploy and govern agentic AI.
AI superagency
Initial expectations fed the fear of people becoming obsolete because they predicted a radical reduction of headcount due to the deployment of agentic AI. More recent views clearly state that human presence remains crucial for success.
Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato’s book “Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future” describes a state in which individuals, empowered by AI, supercharge their creativity and productivity, and heighten their potential.
Currently, 50% of executives are considering maintaining headcount and using AI as digital labor to boost productivity—complementing human skills.
The skillset of the human workforce is paramount in this endeavor. While AI transformation will take some time, leaders must not postpone action. Instead, starting today, they must begin to address workforce risks by equipping their people with skills, introducing and shaping new roles, and initiating talent acquisition.
To scale the impact of your AI strategy, the workforce must be equipped for new ways of working that are driven by human-agent collaboration. This requires cultivating a “human + agent” mindset by leading cultural transformation, delivering focused training, and empowering early adopters to serve as internal champions. New roles must also be introduced, such as prompt engineers to refine interactions, agent orchestrators to manage agent workflows, and human-in-the-loop designers to handle exceptions and build trust.
Turn insight into impact
Skillset inventory and talent acquisition plan
Even though many of your current employees will qualify and will be eager to uplift their skills, there will probably also be skillsets that are beyond the capabilities of the current staff. For those skillsets, you will need to attract talent from the marketplace. You should also identify which roles will evolve, disappear, or emerge, and search accordingly. The first step is to analyze the current skill set across the organization. Understanding the capabilities already in place helps identify both strengths and gaps in relation to the roles that will evolve or emerge with AI integration.
Next, these insights must be mapped against the organization’s AI business strategy. This allows you to determine the critical skills that are missing—whether they relate to technical expertise (such as AI literacy and data interpretation), new workflows, or human-AI interaction models.
Once this gap is clear, the final step is to plan and execute a targeted set of learning and change activities. This includes training programs, reskilling pathways, job redesign, talent acquisition, and change management efforts—all aligned with the timeline and scope of the AI rollout.
Note: You must include efforts to increase AI familiarity in your activities. Across many functions in an organization, AI deployments have encountered implicit resistance from business teams and middle management. This can arise due to fear of disruption, uncertainty around job impact, and lack of familiarity with the technology.
In the agentic AI era, where speed and adaptability are critical, ValueOps Clarity empowers enterprises to build a workforce that’s not only AI-ready, but that can actively drive transformation.
The solution offers powerful skill management and workforce planning capabilities that help organizations gain deep insights into their existing talent landscape. These features enable you to systematically assess current skill sets, identify gaps aligned with strategic initiatives—including AI adoption—and develop targeted workforce plans. With this functionality, you can make informed decisions on reskilling, resource allocation, and future talent needs, ensuring your organization is equipped to adapt and thrive in a rapidly evolving agentic AI business environment.
Track resources, roles, and skills to get insight into your workforce skillset.
Clarity enables proactive workforce planning to prepare for the new roles shaped by agentic AI transformation.
Align workforce upskilling and reskilling with your AI roadmap
“The Value-Driven AI Roadmap” white paper describes a methodology for successful AI implementation and adoption. For planning purposes, it discusses AI technology roadmapping. This is a process during which a multi-layer roadmap is created to plan and coordinate activities at different levels within the enterprise for deploying AI. The roadmap connects business AI needs, AI capabilities, and required AI technologies. It makes perfect sense to add one more layer to the roadmap for aligning the activities that will upskill the workforce. This layer is meant to ensure that upskilling and training initiatives are synchronized with the deployment of agentic AI, equipping human employees with the capabilities to unlock their full potential in the agentic AI era.
Clarity’s layered roadmaps align AI initiatives across business and technical domains, with a dedicated swim lane to map out workforce development, upskilling, and training plans.
Your competitive strength will be defined by readiness
Start now
Organizations that act early will gain a head start in leveraging AI agents to enhance productivity, decision-making, and innovation. Waiting means falling behind more agile competitors. Here are a few more reasons why you should not postpone AI upskilling and reskilling:
- The speed of AI evolution is outpacing traditional learning cycles. Postponing upskilling increases the risk of skill obsolescence, making it harder and more expensive to catch up later.
- Early engagement and training help build familiarity and trust in AI. Delaying upskilling can result in deeper organizational resistance and fear, hindering successful adoption later.
- Workforce planning needs lead time. It takes time to identify which roles will evolve, which new roles and skills will be needed, and how talent should be redeployed. Proactive upskilling enables smoother transitions and avoids future disruption.
- Even initial AI-agent interactions—like task automation, summarization, or data exploration—can bring immediate efficiency gains. Waiting postpones tangible benefits.
ValueOps Clarity facilitates the upskilling journey by providing the visibility, structure, and planning tools needed to align workforce development with strategic AI adoption. From identifying emerging skill gaps to forecasting future role requirements, Clarity helps organizations to anticipate change, prioritize training initiatives, and track progress across portfolios.
To learn more about how ValueOps can help prepare your workforce for the agentic AI era, check out our white paper, “The Value-Driven AI Roadmap,” or request a demo.
