UK firms are reaping the benefits of integrated AI agents, with the majority of business leaders predicting that the technology will soon transform their organisations, in everything from their technical infrastructure to employee roles.  

Fresh research from Salesforce’s UKI Digital Labour Trends report reveals that 78% of C-suite leaders across industries are already integrating AI agents into their workflows, and of those, 81% believe these tools will fundamentally reshape the way their organisations are structured.  

The study, based on a survey of 110 business leaders across the UK and Ireland, found that as AI adoption accelerates, 90% of executives are having more conversations about its implementation, with many now rethinking their growth strategies to keep pace with technological change.

Most execs are planning for their IT (65%), R&D (62%) and sales (41%) departments to grow as AI agents expand across the business, while customer service and operations are likely to shrink.

As organisational structures change, business leaders want to see staff adapt quickly to work in collaboration with AI agents, with almost a quarter (24%) of their workforce set to be reassigned to other roles and departments.

Top reassignment areas include ‌technical roles (59%), research and development (50%), and relationship-building roles (49%), with 84% of leaders intending to retrain employees to work alongside AI agents in the next twelve months, and 40% planning to do so within the next six months.

According to Salesforce, employers are planning to invest an average of 12% of a typical worker’s salary on AI-related retraining over that period, focusing on building skills in human-AI agent collaboration (86%), AI literacy (84%) and adaptability (83%).

Other increasingly valuable skills leaders are prioritising in the AI economy include creative thinking (69%), problem solving (66%), and AI accountability (61%).

It’s not just the rank and file that need to adapt, either, with almost nine in 10 (89%) of senior executives agreeing that integrating AI into workflows will become a critical part of their own role.

Arguing that the vast breadth of the UK’s AI deployment represents ‘one of the biggest skills investments seen in a lifetime’, Salesforce has called for the establishment of a national online digital skills platform to scale training programmes from industry and training providers, and provide better access to the skills needed to future proof the workforce.

To that end, the company has joined a new UK Government-led initiative to train 7.5 million workers in essential AI skills, amounting to a fifth of the UK workforce, over the next five years.

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This will see Salesforce grants of $2.35 million (£1.7m) to UK organisations dedicated to digital and AI literacy, skill building, and STEM career pathways, and partner with the Brunel Centre for Artificial Intelligence to curate thought leadership research.

“I’m encouraged to see the UK Government and business leaders committing to AI training and reskilling, as we position ourselves as a global leader in AI talent,” said Salesforce UKI’s CEO Zahra Bahrololoumi, in a recent blog post.

“Every board and business must prepare for this organisational transformation, equipping their people for a workforce that is both human and digital. This is the digital labour revolution.”