Is your agent coming to your job?

Hello, please let it work.

Best news of the week? A new workplace comedy series will arrive in September from office co-creator Greg Daniels. Even better (for me anyway), the paper is set to yes, newspaper 🗞️. The setup involves a documentary team filmed on Dunder Mifflin with Truth Teller, a local paper in Toledo, Ohio. Oscar’s Oscar (Oscar Nunes) is one of the already announced crossover characters.

Read some answers to the fiery questions of the moment: what are AI agents – and are they coming for my work? And in Office Therapy, we propose tactics to survive in a corporate culture covered by new bosses.

Ready to manage your new human/AI hybrid team?

The concept of “AI Agent” was first gained widespread traction at the end of last year, when the concept of “AI Agent” as a major workplace disruptor first gained widespread traction. This is what Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff said using digital labor that “we are really on the edge of innovative transformation.” At the time, many of us went to 🤷‍♀️. How things change in just a few months.

These agents are embedded so quickly that Stephen Bartlett’s blockbuster has this week’s CEO Podcast’s diary dedicated to “urgent” debates about AI agents, suggesting that 50% of the world’s workforce is under threat. I’m going to see everything: 👀, but I’ll save 2.5 hours.

On a more optimistic side, Benioff spoke with FT in an extensive interview released today. In response to reporter Stephen Morris’ questions about unemployment and the upheaval, he said: “I think it’s important to recognize that there can be changes in the workforce as new technologies emerge. Especially when talking about the emergence of digital labor, you can increase the basic productivity of GDP.

The deployment of Agent AI is much faster than many people deploy their understanding of it. Although it appears that workers are ahead of leaders in this respect. According to a McKinsey report published this year, “Business leaders underestimate the extent to which employees use Genai. C-Suite leaders actually use Genai for at least 30% of their daily work if the percentage is triple.” If that applies to genai, then perhaps the same applies to Agent AI?

It helps us try to define what our workplace agents are doing amid this confusion. Please correct me if you think I’m wrong. But my view is that agents can handle multiple steps in a process or workflow. Or think of an agent (which can stand up with me) like a rolling toy. Set up with access to multiple platforms and processes, provide tasks, run and run until complete. In contrast to what I now consider “Trad” Genai, I answer when I ask ChatGpt or Claude (etc) a question. The end of.

Examples of agents’ work include cost approval, onboarding workers and clients, and cooperation on project ideas. FT’s Cristina Criddle tested an agent AI tool that is published for common work tasks.

Where are you heading with Agent AI in the short term? From what I’m hearing and reading, I think that any conversation we’re all tired of about hybrid work and its benefits (or blah, blah, blah, blah 🥱) will be replaced with another hybrid discussion, a human/agent team within a few months. I recently mentioned this in this newsletter and proposed that traditional ORG charts have been replaced by staff human/AI mixes, often with a totally different combination of roles. Salesforce (again) has some interesting research into the HR Chief’s views on agent AI. 80% of them believe that “within five years, most of the workforce will be human and AI agents/digital labor together.”

There is nothing about employment that HR chiefs think will be lost, but 61% of staff expect to maintain their current role, and those surveyed expect a “19% reduction in labor costs (equivalent to $11,064 per employee” (based on the OECD average wage).

And what about the future? It may be useful to find out how new companies are set up. They don’t have legacy staff so they can do what they want. And some of these startups are very, very lean. According to a report from Bloomberg, the so-called “AI-Native” companies have a very small number of staff, built around AI, with an organizational chart called “Fluid.”

Have you got a better take from an agent? Are you a job destiny or an optimist? Please email me: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

Office Therapy

Problem: I have a good, stable job in rare towns. New outsiders came from global headquarters to lead our branch. The new boss is micromanagement, not listening to experts, has continued to have consultant-type meetings (previously alone), and “visions” of how things change. We are all stressed and angry. An older colleague is talking about early retirement. I can’t afford to leave. How can I overcome it?

Isabel’s advice: I continue to meet people who have had similar experiences in different sectors. The broader context is that many workplaces are changing very quickly, and sometimes leaders are in “panic” over AI. Work goes, work changes. That’s the whole picture, and the once stable workplace may never be the same again. (That calms down, but the workplace culture is different.)

We all get mad at the pointless change. And this boss changes things just to cultivate his own sense of purpose and importance (this has always happened, big ego is given in business). However, in your case, HQ may also have a wider plan as he sent this former consenting party to the branch.

If you now choose to accept it, if you choose to accept it, then it is to rise up what is going on and see it as if you are going to see it from “high”. Do your job and make yourself the person your boss wants to talk to at the “vision” meeting. After that, you are in a position to try and know more. What are the plans for the headquarters? Also, can you use that information to secure your own work?

You may need to go on lots of short walks, take deep breaths in the toilet, stop yourself from freaking out or collapse too much. You are just like sadness and anger, and this is truly sadness, worthy and because of an office culture that can now be lost. But don’t get too stuck with angry gossip. Listen and don’t absorb it. All this will be cass🌅.

Five Top Stories from the World of Work

Why you should fool your boss: The so-called polygamous work was hit by a phrase describing a remote worker who has multiple jobs without telling either employer. Emma Jacobs investigates.

Openai Chief Sam Altman: ‘This is genius-level intelligence. “Lunch with FT has always been a great read, and while this is no exception, the bonus in this interview is that Sam Altman is making lunch for FT editor Roula Khalaf in his kitchen.

Currently, white-collar jobs have a minimum wage. The UK minimum wage is worth £12.21 per hour. It’s approaching, Sarah O’Connor reports to the lowest salary in several white-collar sectors, including IT and marketing.

Is the UK failing to graduates? Delphine Strauss and Amy Borrett’s statistics on the graduate job market. The value of a degree is still displayed in lifetime revenue (as of £1 million on drugs), but there are significant variations.

Microsoft will ax the 3% of the latest job cuts. The company did not confirm whether the cuts are driven by AIRED efficiency, reported FT’s Rafe Uddin, but previously said they wanted to streamline middle managers.

One more thing. . .

The New York Times has a beautiful interactive piece that offers “the best advice I’ve ever heard”, edited from many interviews in Jancee Dunn’s paper. My favorite comes from Jamil Zaki from Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He suggests “spreading a positive chitbit about someone. Maybe it’s a little known, but stunning fact about that person. Even better, “study suggests that spreading ‘positive gossip’ could encourage others to do it.” Try this at work. I’ll report it.

View from the working IT community 📷

I love photos taken from readers’ desks and rooftops, and I aim to make them all public. This week’s balcony view comes from Emily Griffith, senior manager at British Business Bank in Sheffield. She writes:

“Many of the city centre had to be rebuilt after World War II, but the 1920s bank floor “Steel City House” is taller than most other buildings in Sheffield city centre. ”

Emily receives the “Lucky Dip” from the new working It-Adjacent Management and Life Improvement book from the pile above my desk.

To your office view (or send sedative photos of your dog, cat, or other furry colleagues): isabel.berwick@ft.com