AI Adoption Surges Among Desk Workers, Boosting Productivity and Job Satisfaction

Business leaders continue to push workers toward daily use of AI

Salesforce and Slack surveyed 5,000 desk workers across the globe and found daily AI usage has more than doubled in the past six months. 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. Also: Your next job? Managing a fleet of AI agents 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. 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. Also: 15 new jobs AI is creating - including 'Synthetic reality producer' 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 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: Also: 5 ways to turn AI's time-saving magic into your productivity superpower Here are the ways AI makes daily users more productive: 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: Also: How to turn ChatGPT into your AI coding power tool - and double your output 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 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. 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. Also: The battle-tested tips CEOs swear by when change hits from every direction 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.

Workers are getting to grips with agents, says Slack data; not really, says Lucidworks agentic researcher - take your pick!

Back in October last year, two-thirds of desk workers had not tried AI tools. Flash forward to today and 60% reckon to now use AI at work, with daily usage up 233%. That's according to the outcomes from the latest Slack Workforce Index, based on polling of 5,156 workers across Australia, France, Germany, Japan, UK and the US. Who's using it? What they're getting out of this? Daily AI users are more likely to report 'very good' or 'good' productivity (83%), being able to focus (81%), being flexible (79%) and managing stress (77%). There are the inevitable regional variations at play. In the US, 88% talk about better productivity and 87% cite ability to focus being good or very good, while in the UK the ability to access people, files and resources comes out at 88%, followed by good or very good productivity, Meanwhile, counter to the 'robots coming to steal our jobs' narrative, 80% report a good or very good sense of belonging, the same percentage point to more job satisfaction, while 77% cite a good or very good work/life balance. In the UK, job satisfaction that is good or very good is pointed to by 87% of respondents, while in the US it's 83%. In comparison, for non-AI users in the UK, that percentage drops to 68% and in the US to 77%. The top three ways AI is said to have increased worker productivity are eliminating need for extensive research (51%), assisting with writing/communication (50%), and helping brainstorm to overcome creative blocks (45%. US respondents cite providing real-time feedback/improving performance highly (52%), while their UK counterparts cite this even more highly at 54%. And 96% of AI users overall have used AI to perform tasks they didn't have the skills to do themselves. Interestingly, AI is said to enhance rather than replace connection among workers. For example, half of Gen Z respondents say AI hasn't changed how often they collaborate with colleagues, while 29% say it's actually increased their engagement as a team. Given the current rise of agentic tech, it's interesting to note that 40% of respondents say they work with agents, with 30% of Millennials claiming to "thoroughly understand" AI agents, more than Gen Z on 22%. This is most likely attributable to Millennials probably holding more senior positions within organizations - some 43% of executives report daily AI use overall, along with 35% of senior managers and 23% of middle managers. These people are using AI in a business context rather than a personal one and hold decision-making roles that Gen Z employees do not yet. That said, one conclusion from this study is that desk workers - as opposed to execs/management - are becoming more comfortable with both AI in general and agents in particular. Some 40% of desk workers polled say they are now using agents. The more they use them, the more trust in the tech will grow, argues Lucas Puente, Slack VP of Research: As workers actually use and experiment with AI agents, their trust and enthusiasm in this technology grows - and we see them leveraging agents to unlock new skills and opportunities in their everyday work. As to what early adopters of agents are looking for: Of course, it's 2025 and barely a day goes by without a fresh piece of AI/agent-related research appearing in our in-boxes. Co-inciding with the Slack 'glass very much half-full' worldview, along comes a new study from Lucidworks into agents that lends itself to a more 'glass half-empty' reading - only 35% of organizations meet the minimum requirements for successful use of agentic AI. And according to this study, Dawn of the Agentic AI Era, agentic AI adoption is very low, with only six percent of companies having implemented more than one Agentic AI solution, and most of those that have are in the technology industry sector. It should be noted at this point that this downbeat assessment of agentic adoption comes from none other than...er, an actual agent. As well as tapping into the opinions of 1,600 CEOs, CTOs, and other AI strategy decision-makers from 15 industries across eight countries, Lucidworks basically sent out its own agent, Guydbot, to top this data up: While other reports rely on self-reported data and aspirational roadmaps, our agentic AI tool has autonomously evaluated actual digital experiences across 1,100+ companies to document which AI capabilities are in production today. This complements insights from our survey of 10,000+ AI leaders over three years. Overall, the conclusion that Guydbot comes back with is one of widespread anxiety and confusion among AI adopters. Some 83% of respondents to the Lucidworks poll reported feeling 'Major' or 'Extreme' concern over their AI progress, an eightfold increase on the position two years ago. Mike Sinoway, CEO of Lucidworks, is quoted as arguing: If you think of Agentic AI - AI that performs tasks - as a car, then you can imagine Generative AI as the engine, and data as the fuel. Our report finds that too many e-commerce companies are trying to build Formula One racers around go-kart engines - and they might not even have enough gas to fill their tanks. To put it another way: companies have been trying to run before they can walk because of top-down pressure. Now panic is setting in. Many are reluctant to admit how far behind they really are, but we have the receipts to prove it thanks to Guydbot. As noted, another day, another piece of AI/agentic research. Which to take on board? Well, ultimately that's up to you. The Slack data makes for interesting reading as much for the acceleration of interest in and acceptance of AI in the workplace that it indicates, particularly the suggestion that desk workers are engaging, at a very early stage, with agents. The Lucidworks study is a different beast and covers a lot more ground across a more segmented study base, so it isn't ultimately a case of comparing apples and apples. If neither of them suits your worldview, never mind. There will be another report along tomorrow, no doubt.