Business leaders continue to push workers toward daily use of AI

Daily AI usage for desk workers has grown by 233% since the beginning of the year, according to Salesforce’s latest Slack Workforce Index based on a survey of 5,000 desk workers globally. AI now helps to create a competitive advantage by providing 64% more productivity and 81% more job satisfaction for those who use AI versus colleagues who don’t.

And the benefits of AI go far beyond task automation. Since November 2024, AI adoption among workers has risen 50%, with 60% of workers now using AI. The use of AI is now a daily habit. Adoption of digital labor is also on the rise, with 40% of workers having worked with an agent, and 23% of them have offloaded tasks to agents to complete on their behalf.

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Welcome to the age of hybrid work and the autonomous enterprise, where businesses will augment the human workforce with AI agents, according to research from technology specialist MuleSoft. Further validating the rise in desk workers’ use of AI, the top seven trends that Mulesoft suggests are shaping digital transformation in 2025 include three centered around the adoption of AI agents. 

1. House of AI agents: The autonomous enterprise built on a “house of agents” will take hold, as organizations augment the human workforce with AI, freeing them to focus on more valuable work.
2. Mature agentics: Autonomous AI agents will become a critical building block for the modern digital enterprise as AI strategies reach a new level of maturity.
3. Multi-agent architectures: These technologies will demand built-in governance guardrails to mitigate security and privacy risks without impacting user productivity.

Recent research from 200 global chief human resources officers (CHROs) also shows that AI agent deployments will grow 327% during the next two years. HR chiefs recognize the transformative power of agents. Organizations must focus on strategy, skills, and teamwork to create successful hybrid workplaces. 

CHROs plan to expand their digital labor in the next two years, investing in AI agents to increase productivity, according to the latest Salesforce global research. This widespread integration of agents is expected to yield a 30% gain in overall productivity, underscoring the compelling business case for embracing AI in operational processes. This projected integration of AI agents is expected to drive considerable changes in workforce skill sets and the overall structural design of businesses. 

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Regarding structure, CHROs foresee a significant need to redeploy nearly a quarter of their global workforce (24%) to accommodate new roles and responsibilities due to implementing digital labor. This trend highlights the proactive measures HR leaders must take to adapt to this evolving landscape.

Here are some of the key findings on how desk workers are enthusiastically embracing AI on a daily basis.

AI enhances employee productivity

AI is making workers more productive and enabling them to grow into more creative, strategic work. Compared to non-users, daily AI users are more likely to report “very good” productivity (64%), focus (58%), and job satisfaction (81%). The top three ways AI  and AI agents have increased worker productivity are:

1. Eliminating the need for extensive research.
2. Assisting with writing/communication.
3. Helping brainstorm to overcome creative blocks. 

Also: 5 ways to turn AI’s time-saving magic into your productivity superpower

Here are the ways AI makes daily users more productive: 

1. Provide quick information, eliminating extensive research (51%).
2. Assist with writing and communication, saving time and effort (50%).
3. Help brainstorming and overcoming creative blocks (45%).
4. Automate repetitive tasks, freeing time for complex work (44%).
5. Provide real-time feedback, improving performance (44%).
6. Integrate tools, automating data flow and streamlining work (39%).
7. Enable workers to expand expertise, reducing reliance on colleagues (39%).
8. Decrease the need to attend meetings live, freeing time (25%).

AI is expanding the capability of desk workers. The survey found that 96% of AI users have used AI to perform tasks they didn’t have the skills to do themselves. Some example use cases of AI agents for desk workers are: 

1. 72% want AI agents to augment or automate brainstorming.
2. 80% want AI agents to assist with research for deal support.
3. 82% want AI agents to create presentations. 

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Daily users of AI agents are also more confident in their work and more than two times more likely to express high trust in AI across areas like data protection, accuracy, and decision-making.

AI enhances employee connections

AI is improving employee engagement and sense of belonging. Daily AI users are 246% more likely to feel more connected to colleagues and report a 62% higher sense of belonging at work. More than 1 in 3 Gen Z workers are feeling more connected at work. These digital natives have not changed the way they engage and collaborate with teammates; 50% said AI is not impacting their ability to engage at work. In fact, 29% of Gen Z noted that AI actually helped increase their engagement. 

Executive workers take the lead on daily use of AI

Daily use of AI for executives is at 43%, compared to 35% of senior managers and 23% of middle managers who use AI every day. Millennials are also emerging as the surprise AI power users at work. Thirty percent of millennials say they thoroughly understand AI agents — edging out even Gen Z (22%). And 68% of millennials use AI for strategic work like drafting, summarizing, and ideating.

It is encouraging to see business leaders adopting daily use of AI and leading by example. It is also important to note that desk workers are expanding their skills and ability to deliver more positive outcomes by increasing their daily usage of AI, including the adoption of digital labor where they can proactively transfer low-value, low-effort work to AI agents. 

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The future of work is hybrid, human and digital labor, co-creating value at scale, at speed of need, to ensure stakeholder success. One of the key takeaways to re-emphasize is that 96% of workers have used AI to perform tasks they previously didn’t have the skills to do themselves. The best use of AI is not just for cognitive transfer (workload shifting from humans to agents) but also cognitive upgrades, where AI agents help improve the skills and capabilities of the human employees. 

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