Rise of the digital workforce: rethinking work in the age of agentic AI
The future of businesses redesigned around AI is still unclear. But companies can't wait and see. The early adopters will gain a serious advantage.
What is perceived as science fiction today becomes mainstream tomorrow – and transformative the day after. Such is the progression of generative AI, and now, agentic AI.
We may not have all the answers yet. But the questions are becoming clearer. And the organisations that ask them early – and act boldly – will shape the future of work for the better. As Professor Ethan Mollick said recently, “The time to begin isn’t when everything becomes clear – it’s now, while everything is still messy and uncertain. The advantage goes to those willing to learn fastest.”
The pace at which AI is evolving is staggering. Agentic AI – autonomous systems capable of reasoning, learning, and acting independently – are no longer a theoretical concept. Agents are already executing human tasks, orchestrating workflows, and adapting through interactions with both humans and other agents. It’s only getting faster as enterprise software players, hyperscalers, platform providers, frontier labs and new agentic product start-ups are innovating and releasing capabilities into market at a blistering pace.
The short of it really is that we’ve well and truly entered a new era of transformation – and what we’re witnessing is the rise of a digital workforce.
To harness its full potential, we must move beyond outdated paradigms – especially the one-to-one thinking that equates digital labour to human labour in direct substitution. Human capacity is finite. Digital labour is not. It’s a limitless, scalable, always-on capacity that can multiply effort, insight, and creativity at a scale and speed that previously was not possible. When we break this outdated paradigm, and rethink how we work, the opportunities look very different.
Picture a marketing team empowered by AI agents capable of simulating hundreds of thousands of campaigns, then surfacing the top-performing strategies for a human to evaluate. Or a sales force supported by thousands of virtual assistants, each tailoring offers to individual customer profiles based on real-time analysis of preferences, history, and behaviour. Or a finance team where CFOs have thousands of digital finance analysts. These examples are just a starting point, and exciting as they are, even these are constrained by today’s thinking of structure and work. We’re not just talking about automation for productivity – it’s a reinvention of how we work. It demands a wholesale redesign of how we think about workflows, roles, and even how value is created.
This is happening now and if you’re following this space closely, you’ll have seen headlines with high-profile CEOs setting directives on AI usage by employees with AI first strategies. We’re also seeing examples of even bolder moves with some organisations merging HR and IT departments as the line between managing technology and managing people becomes increasingly blurred with agents.
These organisations are going beyond surface-level integration and not just bolting AI onto existing systems – they are reimagining those systems entirely. They are looking at core functions such as customer service, product development, HR, and operations to be restructured and redesigned to take full advantage of AI’s capabilities.
Looking ahead, leadership roles also need to be redesigned as we consider the digital workforce. To date, leadership has been built around managing people, now we need managers who orchestrate fleets of AI agents as well as human teams. Setting clear expectations, evaluating outputs, and defining what “good” looks like are quickly becoming core competencies for leaders as they take on accountability to transform their organisations with AI.
Another essential question for every organisation is this: how far will you allow automation to proliferate? The capability is here – but are your systems, culture and people prepared? Agentic AI can perform complex tasks end-to-end, but without clear governance and ethical guidelines, it can introduce real risk. The path forward involves deliberate decisions about where to retain human oversight, where to build in safeguards, and how to ensure transparency in automated processes.
What the end state looks like when functions, organisations or even sectors are redesigned around AI is not yet clear. But waiting isn’t an option. Those who progress the fastest will gain significant, if not impassable, competitive advantage.
We might not want to be in a race with AI – but we are. It’s a global race, and the stakes are high. Productivity, competitiveness and economic growth are all on the line. And as the pace of technological change accelerates, so must our ability to act with clarity and intent.
The race leaders will be those who are already laying the groundwork to rebuild, rethink and reinvent around AI. We’ve got a lot more to say about how organisations should be planning to shape the future of work with a sustained focus on delivering scale and value. Watch this space!
Stu Scotis is National GenAI Lead at Deloitte Australia.
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