Workers Are Excited About AI Agents — So Why Are Companies Screwing It Up?

0:00Today on the AI Daily Brief, it turns out that workers are actually kind of enthusiastic about agents. Unfortunately, companies are completely squandering that potential momentum. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.

0:23All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, Blitzy, Superintelligent, and Robots & Pencils. To get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com slash ai daily brief, or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. And for information about sponsoring the show or really anything else related to the show, check out the website, aidailybrief.ai. And with that, let's get into it. For this weekend's long read slash big think episode, we have a new study from EY. AI is so fast moving that I'm always interested to see the latest data about how people's feelings about the technology are changing and evolving.

0:59And this new study from EY deals with two themes that have been really pertinent across the scope of 2025. The first is, of course, the rise of agent deployments. As we've seen from studies from another consulting firm, KPMG, between Q1 of this year and Q3 of this year, agent deployment nearly quadrupled from 11 % back in the first quarter all the way up to 42 % last quarter. Agents are very quickly moving out of the realm of the theoretical into the realm of the real. At the same time, throughout this year, companies have been dealing with a pretty serious communication overhang. Last December, Writer AI did a study where they surveyed 800 employees and 800 executives and found just a wild gap between how those two different groups thought about AI with regard to their companies.

1:49In a huge percentage of cases, executives were much more bullish and much more convinced about the quality of their AI initiatives than were those employees. On the question of whether their company's approach to AI was well-controlled and strategic, 73 % of executives said that it was, as opposed to just 47 % of employees. When it came to a question of whether their company had a high level of AI literacy, 64 % of executives said yes, just one-third, 33 % of employees said yes. On the very basic question of whether their company has an AI strategy, a full 89 % of executives said yes, while just 57 % of employees said yes.

2:29So that's the setting into which this study comes. And the central paradox that they found was on the one hand, excitement and a readiness to embrace agentic AI, and on the other hand, a very meaningful set of concerns about what it meant for their own future. Now, obviously, this paradox is going to take a lot more than better technology to uncover, but let's take a step back and get more into the details of this survey. From a methodology perspective, the survey involved over 1 ,100 U.S. employees across six industries, including banking and capital markets, wealth and asset management, consumer products, manufacturing, chemicals, and industrial products, oil and gas, and technology, so a pretty cross-cutting range, with all of the people surveyed working for companies with an annual revenue of a billion dollars or more.

3:15It was pretty evenly split between managers and supervisors and non-managers, 586 managers versus 562 non-managers. There was a wide generational range. It was fairly evenly split between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. And most importantly, this was pretty recent. The survey was in the field between August 8th and September 3rd, so between 6 and 10 weeks ago, which as these surveys go, is pretty contemporary. For example, all of this happened after the release of Jeep D5. So let's talk about some of the findings. The first is that there is a lot of enthusiasm when it comes to agents.

3:5284 % of workers said that they were eager to embrace agentic AI in their role. Now, if you weren't paying attention closely, that might be surprising, given how much there is a constant media drumbeat around agent-led disruption and worker displacement. When you dig into what they expect to have a positive impact on, it starts to become a little bit clearer. 86 % said that they expected it to have a positive impact on their productivity. 83 % said that they expected it to have a positive impact on their work experience. and 82 % said that they expected agents to have a positive impact on their work-life balance.

4:26So these are very clearly a set of folks who understand that these technologies could unlock greater efficiencies not just for their company, but for the way that they interface with their own work. By being more productive, by cutting out some of the drudgery, they expect to have a better time at work, getting more done more efficiently, and because of that, being able to win some of those gains back to a better balance between their personal and work life. Also, for those who have started to dig into AI, they're getting more confident in their usage. 90 % of those who said that they're already using agentic AI are confident in their abilities to use AI agents today.

5:02So this is some of the good news. And honestly, it is very foundational good news. It provides a base that everything else can be built around. But as EY puts it, workers are definitely feeling lots of contrary and frankly, sometimes contradictory emotions around AI and agents. So let's talk about their concerns. The first is, of course, job security. Despite the fact that 84 % are excited and ready to embrace agentic AI in their roles, 56%, including a huge overlap, are also concerned about job security. And to me, this just reads like rational people. People understand that these tools are too powerful and too useful to be ignored, and who understand in specific ways how they can benefit themselves, but who also understand that they are both powerful now and getting nothing but more so, that it could impact the way that their job prospects look in the future.

5:57Among those who are concerned about job security, it is higher among non-managers than among managers. 48 % of managers had job security concerns because of agents, while a full 65%, nearly two-thirds of non-managers, said agents made them concerned for their own job security. The next set of concern, one that will be very understandable to many of you who have sought out a daily podcast to help keep you informed, is the feeling of overwhelm around AI. 61 % said that they are overwhelmed by the constant influx of new agentic information. Basically, there's always something new happening and it's very, very hard to keep up.

6:34And what's interesting is that even among those who use tools, they are still overwhelmed by how much is happening in the field. 64 % of those workers who are using agentic AI are also overwhelmed by the amount of new agentic tools that are being introduced in the workplace. What's more, in addition to just being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that's happening, people also feel like they're falling behind their peers. 54 % of respondents overall said that they felt like they're falling behind their peers on using agentic AI. That included 48 % of managers and 61 % of non-managers, meaning that the vague and general overwhelm of so much information is translating into a more specific concern around falling behind relative to everyone else around you.

7:19The next category of concern is around management. And the short of it here is that people recognize that we are going into a fundamentally different era of management, based on a fundamentally different era of how work happens. As we move from purely human workforces, where software is simply a tool for assisting humans in getting work done, to hybrid workforces in which software in many cases does the work itself, that means we now have a new type of hybrid human agentic workforce. That brings up whole new categories of questions around how to manage that. How do you navigate between what an agent should do and what a human should do?

8:00How do you handle questions of handoff and complex workflows that involve moving from human to agent and back to human and back to agent and so on and so forth? There's also other questions like role bleed. When a much wider array of people have access to more capacity because of agentic tools, how do you keep people in their lanes rather than spilling over into one another? Are you even supposed to keep people in their lanes? Or should Should product people just become designers? Should designers just become coders as well? These are questions that it's going to take lots of time on task to figure out in practice.

8:31They're not just going to be able to be theorized about. And in any case, it's showing up in the numbers. 53 % of managers that were surveyed were concerned that they're not good at integrating and managing a hybrid human and agentic workforce. And 63 % of non-managers said that they're less inclined to pursue management because of their concerns around managing agent human teams. One of the things that I felt reading a lot of this was just sympathy and a desire to remind people that no one is an expert yet in these things. There is literally no such thing as someone who is an expert in managing hybrid agent workforces.

9:07There are only people who have spent more time on it than others who are doing their best to distill that experience into insight to help others get caught up to speed even faster. For those managers who are concerned that they're not good at integrating and managing a hybrid human agentic workforce, even if they're right and they're not good at it, the gap between their skills in that area and the person who's the best in the world at that are radically lower than just about any other skills gap that they've ever faced because this is so new for everyone. So broadly speaking, again, we have a foundation of agent enthusiasm with these very discrete areas where there's a lot of concern around job security, around overwhelm, and of course, around management.

9:48Which brings EY to their high-level recommendations. They think that there are three imperatives that organizational leadership needs to undertake. Those are one, clear communication, two, effective training, and three, a different approach to management.

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12:29Let's talk first about clear communication. One of the things that we have found over and over again with super intelligent audits is that there are unfortunately multiple ways for communication to get in the way of AI and agent strategy. One is the one that you would imagine, which is just there being a disconnect between what leaders think is happening and what they've communicated and what employees have actually heard. But on the flip side, there's also the over-enthusiastic leader who's communicated too much or in an unclear way where employees just feel overwhelmed. And the point is that when it comes to this idea of clear communication, that clear is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

13:07What comes through incredibly strongly from the results of this survey, however, is that the payoff of clear communication could not be, well, clearer. Just look at these numbers between workers who say that their organization clearly communicates their AI strategy versus as those who say that their organization does not clearly communicate it. They are far more likely to actually use agentic AI. 39 % among those who don't have clear communication versus 66 % among those who do. You're talking about the difference between a little over a third of people using it and exactly two thirds of people using it.

13:40In terms of how willing to embrace AI they are, it's 69 % for those who are in organizations who don't communicate their AI strategy clearly, as opposed to a full 87 % among those who do. Employees at organizations who clearly communicate their strategy are also just so much more likely to be familiar with agentic AI, 46 % to 74%. And it's not just awareness and usage, it's also sentiment. When organizations have clearly communicated about their AI strategy, it leads to much more positive sentiment around AI. Comparing responses from those at organizations with clear communication around AI versus those without, when it comes to how they predict agentic AI will improve productivity, it's 89 % to 76%.

14:26There is an even bigger gap between those who think that AI will help decision-making, 87 % of workers at those firms that communicate clearly versus just 67 % at those that don't. Work-life balance, 85 % to 69%. And overall work experience, 86 % to 71%. And when it comes to numbers around people who have actually used AI, it's clear that using AI is better when it's used as part of an overall strategy. Among organizations with clear communication, 92 % of workers surveyed said that AI agents had positively impacted their productivity. Again, that's not a prediction for the future. That's as of right now.

15:03That number was 30 full percentage points higher than at firms who didn't have clear communication, where only 62 % said that the AI agents that they had used had positively impacted productivity. Basically, if your agents aren't pointing towards a common goal as part of a common strategy, it seems just much more likely to potentially underperform. The next imperative to discuss is effective training. And it is so clear that people are just desperately hungry for actual training around these skills and not getting it from their employers. 89 % of those surveyed believe that upskilling and reskilling are crucial for staying relevant in this AI-augmented workplace.

15:43And yet 59 % surveyed cite a lack of adequate training as a key organizational barrier. Basically, they're saying that everyone knows that training is key, and 6 in 10 say their organization isn't doing enough. Now, as I've discussed before, I think that this problem is even more acute when we're talking about agents, not just co-pilots and assistants. Managing agents is fundamentally different than just being good at prompt engineering. It goes even beyond context engineering, which is the next big thing. Managing agents involves thinking differently, thinking more broadly, thinking comprehensively, thinking about workflows.

16:18It's a different skill set. and it's one that's not easy to access. Now, part of the reason that organizations are behind here, with only 52 % of leaders saying that their organization has a fully developed agentic training program, is that there aren't a ton of great options out in the market. And by the way, every time I say that, if you know of something that's good, please let me know. I don't mean to besmirch things that are out there. I just don't see a lot of them. And I'm not hearing a lot of examples or case studies of people using them effectively. What instead I see is a lot of homegrown training initiatives around agents.

16:50We're seeing a lot of sandboxes with guardrails. We're seeing a lot of elevating champions who are then bringing their experiences to others. We're not seeing a lot of off-the-shelf training that's actually making a difference. And it might be because of this that the vast majority of people are learning about this stuff outside of work. 85 % of workers surveyed said that they're learning about how to work alongside agents outside of work. And 83 % said most of their agentic AI knowledge is self-taught. Now, I'm all for self-teaching. I think that the best way to learn how to use agents is to just go use agents.

17:23I think there is no substitute for getting in your reps, but it certainly should not be the case that more than 8 in 10 employees are primarily having to be self-taught. At least not if organizations want to have broad transformation across the whole company. There are also real trust and security issues. There are security issues in the sense that if people are using privileged and confidential data in their home subscriptions to these tools, that can present a real risk. But there's also just the fact that organizations that are leaving it entirely to people on their own don't have any chance to vet how good or reputable a source is.

17:54In other words, when people are being self-taught, are they comprehensively developing a curriculum of vetted sources that they're sure can really help them? Or are they just subscribing to a Twitter Threadboys online course because that's what's available to them? I will continue to beat the drum that companies need to be spending more on training. This is not going away. This is not getting better. In fact, it's just getting harder. Invest now and see the benefits accrue. Third imperative from EY is around thinking differently about management. We talked before about how people are overwhelmed with the management challenges.

18:28That 53 % of current managers are concerned that they might not be that good at managing or supervising AI augmented or agent human hybrid teams. 63 % of non-managers said they're more hesitant to pursue those types of roles due to concerns about managing that type of team. and 82 % of managers said that managing and supervising AI agents in addition to human employees will make their experience more challenging. Now, there were some interesting generational differences they found around this as well. The baby boomers, it seems, could be in a good position to have principled leadership in these areas, but they're just placing less emphasis on their importance than younger generations.

19:06Gen Z, on the other hand, are way on the other end of their journey, and they're not really at that managerial level yet. They're just thinking about how agents are going to impact them. And on the one hand, while they're very familiar with agentic AI and optimistic about its ability to impact their productivity, their decision-making, they're also overwhelmed by just the constant influx of agentic information. This is the group that's most likely to say that a lack of training is a big organizational barrier. Millennials EY found are experiencing what they call a confidence crisis. While the overall average of managers that were worried about being good at managing an AI team was 53%.

19:42Among millennials, it was 62%. They were also more likely than others to be worried about human replacement. And I think that this conveys this uncomfortable in-between, where some of these folks are just coming into positions of authority and leadership. They're not exactly sure what middle management is going to look like in the future. They have a lot of work to do to integrate agents into the workforce that they're managing. They're kind of the frontline managers in some ways who are most tasked with bringing the agent and human workforce together, but they're not so secure in their positions, like some of the older folks, that they don't think that they could be displaced as well.

20:15Gen X managers seem to be kind of the Goldilocks area. EY writes that they're eager to embrace agentic AI, and they also have a high usage rate to match. Unlike some of the other generations, they are highly confident in their ability to effectively manage those AI-augmented teams. In fact, 94 % said that they are confident in that area, which is wildly divergent from some of the other groups. Ultimately, I think that we're going to have to think differently about management and that going back to effective training, part of the training that's going to be required is around management itself.

20:46In fact, if anything, everyone is going to be much more like a manager than they were in the past. Even the most junior employees in the companies are going to be managing teams of agents in some way. And so thinking about broad-based management approaches is going to be really valuable. Look, overall, I think that this study is actually wildly positive. What it shows to me is that we're way, way past the question of if this is going to be a thing in the future. There is an unspoken but clear recognition that agents are simply and forever from here a part of the work landscape. And now it's just a question of how to integrate that well.

21:22Even with just this little bit of information, organizations can start to build a blueprint of what they need to do next. Now, of course, quick shill for super intelligent. If you want more specifics about exactly what your organization could be doing next, come ask us. That's exactly what we do. But I'm encouraged to see so much more practical, hands-on information and more and more feedback and response from people who are actually interacting with these technologies versus just imagining how they might impact them in the future. That's going to do it for this weekend edition of the AI Daily Brief.

21:51Hopefully this study was interesting to you as well. Appreciate you listening or watching as always. Until next time, peace. .