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Are you prepared to treat an AI agent as though it were a trusted colleague?
And more importantly, would you feel comfortable encouraging your employees to do the same?
At present, the prospect of looping in a bot to your Monday morning stand-up or giving them an employee-like record on your HRIS might be enough to make your hair stand on end. Including AI agents in your company’s team structure, alongside employees, may induce a shudder.
However, the world’s top executives envisage such a workplace, where employees work hand-in-hand with AI bots and tools, also known as ‘agentic AI.’ Moreover, they have taken significant strides to make it happen.
Execs want AI agents and employees on a level footing
Earlier this week, at the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland, PwC Chairman Mohamed Kande called for businesses to think of AI as a “digital colleague.”
On the same day, Goldman Sachs rolled out an AI agent for 10,000 staff members, including traders, bankers, and asset managers. Chief Information Officer Marco Agenti described the tool as “like talking to another GS employee.”
The concept of AI agents as digital employees toted by Kande and Agenti has been echoed by other executives in recent days, weeks, and months.
At Davos for example, where AI has been one of the hottest topics, the CEO of Edelman said AI is like a “partner” to the publishing giant’s employees.
Alongside Goldman Sachs, many companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and Citigroup have rolled out virtual AI assistants designed to work alongside different teams. AI agents are helping those companies with a wide variety of work including process automation, note summarizing, and documentation, as well as more complex tasks.
In December, for example, Citigroup’s head of technology told employees in a memo that two new AI tools would be like “having a super-smart coworker at your fingertips to help navigate commonly used policies and procedures across HR, risk, compliance, and finance.”
The intentions of corporate leaders across the globe have added significant weight to a prediction made by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in January of this year. “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.”
Are HR professionals and employees ready for AI ‘colleagues’?
While AI tech proponents and company executives may be enthralled at the prospect of productivity gains and virtual employees, reaction from other corners has historically been less positive.
In July of last year, HR tech platform Lattice encountered a wave of backlash after launching a product that gave digital workers official employee records.
“Lattice believes that we need to fully understand what it looks like to integrate AI employees into the workforce to make sure we create transparent, responsible practices around hiring AI," said CEO Sarah Franklin.
A statement outlining the feature said it would allow employers to onboard AI agents and assign them managers, monitor their performance, and prescribe them training like any other employee.
"That's why we want to be the first to bring an AI employee through all the same steps as a human one – onboarding, goal setting, receiving feedback – to uncover the challenges we'll face with the AI workforce, and start to come up with practical solutions for our customers."
The move was met with swift criticism from HR and tech professionals. “This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way, and I say that as someone building an AI company,” said Sawyer Middeleer, Chief of Staff at Aomni, under a LinkedIn post from Franklin announcing the move.
“Treating AI agents as employees disrespects the humanity of your real employees,” he continued. “Worse, it implies that you view humans simply as "resources" to be optimized and measured against machines.”
Thanks to the backlash, Lattice shelved the product feature. “This innovation sparked a lot of conversation and questions that have no clear answers yet,” Franklin told Fortune.
Employees have also consistently reported fears about AI including job security, safety, and ethical concerns. EY’s 2023 AI Anxiety in Business Survey found that 64% of surveyed workers were worried about AI replacing their jobs. Other top concerns include a negative impact on pay, missing out on promotions, as well as legal and cybersecurity risks.
Reskilling key to driving employees adoption of AI
A lot can happen in six months, however. Although Lattice came up against significant opposition at the time, the intentions of top executives have since been made clear. While not all will go as far as giving bots official employee records, agentic AI is coming to our workplaces whether workers like it or not.
Indeed, some prominent HR and learning executives are now leading that shift, advocating that the best way for employees to get used to the idea of AI as digital colleagues is to facilitate secure, hands-on use with such tools.
Earlier in January, HR Grapevine reported that PwC hosted close to 500 ‘prompting parties’ last year, in a bid to remove fear and get staff used to working alongside the technology.
Leah Houde, PwC’s Chief Learning Officer, said the sessions help workers learn from one another about AI tech in a safe, low-risk environment.
“The cognitive load that it takes to just try something new in the course of doing what you're normally doing is hard," Houde told Business Insider, who first reported on the parties. 1,000 more ‘playground sessions’ are planned for the coming months.
Similarly, Mary Alice Vuicic, Chief People Officer at Thomson Reuters, told HR Grapevine in November 2024 about the company’s training platform – ‘Open Arena’ – where staff are getting to grips with the company’s AI tools.
“If you don't give them safe and secure access, they will use it outside of work, and companies do not want that,” Vuicic explained. “We had to get them doing hands-on experimentation to experience what it does in their day-to-day work.”
Workers increasingly accepting of AI agents at work—but threats to jobs create tension
This hands-on approach is being hailed by business executives who are leaning heavily on HR professionals to realize the benefits of AI tools and drive adoption. “People fear what they don't understand, so exposing them to the technology, putting in their hands makes a big difference," said PwC’s Chairman in his Davos talk.
“You don't fear your colleagues, you partner with them” he continued, suggesting that encouraging staff to view AI agents as colleagues means adoption is bottom-up, rather than top-down.
"There is this fallacy of believing that the benefits of augmentation have to come from management," he added. "It has to come from the people."
Similarly, Edelman’s chief exec said at the WEF summit that hands-on training is the only way for firms to ensure agentic AI improves productivity. “The biggest risk is that AI is rejected ... We need to get this accepted by making sure everybody is re-skilled,” he said. “I’m doing this at our company like crazy. You have to use this. You need to try it.”
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Some studies show that these reskilling programs are proving effective in encouraging the acceptance of AI agents in the workplace, helping executives to realise their ambitions for employees and bots working in harmony as digital colleagues.
According to a YouGov Pegaystems report published this week, nearly six in ten US and UK-based employees report using AI agents on a daily basis, despite lingering concerns of reliability and quality. The study found that close to half of workers believe AI will positively impact their jobs over the next five years, while only 13% predict negative effects.
Those workers said improvements to AI agent accuracy and better training should be the top priorities for businesses. On the latter point, employees should expect more development akin to the training programs established by firms like PwC and Thomson Reuters.
A WEF report released ahead of Davos included a study of hundreds of large companies around the globe, finding that 77% said they are planning to reskill and upskill their employees on AI tools between 2025 and 2030.
But while executives are bullish about AI agents and the need for hands-on reskilling, HR professionals should be prepared for the tension created by defining AI agents as digital colleagues.
The same WEF report also found that 41% of employers plan to downsize their workforce, offsetting reduced headcount with AI automation. Sessions at Davos this week confirmed this reality. Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of HR platform Randstad, warned about the impact of AI on some jobs.
“If you look at the jobs that will sort of disappear, anything that has clerk in it, or designer, executive assistants, that is sort of very much under pressure,” he said, caveating that there “will be new jobs” and “plenty of jobs…where AI doesn’t really help.”
Moreover, giving workers more exposure to AI may not necessarily quell their fears or assuage their anxieties. A 2023 CNBC SurveyMonkey Workforce survey found that 60% of employees who used AI regularly were still worried about its impact on their jobs.
While reskilling may counter the impact of lost jobs, the introduction of AI agents as digital employees will undoubtedly represent a cost saving that many businesses will find too tempting to turn down.
It is up to HR professionals to steward both executives and employees through this paradigm shift, ensuring the interests of human workers are protected.
As Goldman Sachs’ Chief Information Officer summarized in his memo: “It always boils down to people… People are going to make a difference, because people are going to be the ones that actually evolve the AI, educate the AI, empower the AI, and then take action.”
