Do agents come for their work?

Hello and welcome to work.

The best news of the week? TO New comedy series in the workplace will come in September, from The office Greg Daniels co -creator. Even better (for me, anyway), The paper It is, yes, located in a newspaper . The configuration is that the documentary team that filmed in Dunder Mfflin is now with The Truth Teller, a local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. Oscar de The office (Oscar Núñez) is an already announced crossed character.

Keep reading to get some answers to the hot questions of the moment: what even are AI agents – And do they come to my work? And in office therapy, I suggest tactics to survive in a corporate culture overturned by a new boss .

Ready to manage your new human hybrid team/AI?

The concept of “AI agents” as the main work disruptors won for the first time to traction at the end of last year, when the co -founder and executive director of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, said that “”We are really on the verge of a revolutionary transformation“Using digital labor. At that time, many of us were . How things change in just a few months.

These agents have been embedded so fast, in fact, that Steven Bartlet’s box office success He CEO diary The podcast this week was dedicated to a “emergency” debate about ia agentssuggesting that 50 percent of the global workforce is under threat. I will see everything: book two and a half hours, although .

On the most optimistic side, Benioff spoke with the FT In a broad interview published today. In response to the questions of the reporter Stephen Morris about the loss of jobs and agitation, he said: “I would say it is important to realize that, when new technologies appear, there may be changes in the workforce. And this is not different, especially when we talk about the emergence of digital workforce.

AI AI deployment is working much faster ‍️ than many people who develop the understanding of it; Although it seems that workers can be ahead of leaders at this point. TO McKinsey report published this year They discovered that “business leaders underestimate how they are widely using Genai leaders. C-SUITE estimate that only 4 percent of employees use Genai for at least 30 percent of their daily work, when in reality that percentage is three times higher.” If that is true for Genai, perhaps the same will be true for the Agent?

It helps me, in the midst of this confusion, to try to define which work agents do. Corry me if I think I am wrong, but my opinion is that agents can handle multiple steps in a work process or flow. Or, alternately, think of an agent as a liquidation toy (have patience with me): configure it with access to multiple platforms and processes, gives it a task, and runs and continues until it is completed. Compare this with what I now think as “Tradice” Genai, where he asks Chatgpt or Claude (etc.) a question and answers. End of.

Examples of agents’ work include approvement, incorporating workers and clients, and collaborating on project ideas. CRIDDLE DE CRISTINA DEL FT Proven some agentic tools available publicly For common work tasks.

Where did we go with AI Agent, in the short term? From what I am listening and reading, I believe that the conversation that we are all tired of having about hybrid work and its benefits (or not, blah, bla ) will be replaced in a matter of months by a different hybrid discussion: the human team/agent. We play this recently in this Information sheet And he suggested that the traditional organism could be replaced by a mixture of human personnel, often making a mixture quite different from roles. Salesforce (again) has some Interesting research According to the opinions of the human resources leaders about the Agent AI: 80 percent of them think that “within five years, most labor forces will have humans and agents of digital work that work together.”

It is not known how many works will be lost the human resources leaders, but they expect 61 percent of the staff to remain in the current roles, and the respondents anticipate “a 19 percent reduction in labor costs, the equivalent of $ 11,064 per employee” (according to the average wages of the OECD) .

And the future? It may be useful to see how new companies are being configured. They have no person inherited so they can do what they want. And some of these new companies are very thin. The so -called “Native AI” companies have a very small number of staff, are built around AI, and their organized organizations are, According to a Bloomberg report, “fluid”.

Do you have a better opinion about the agents? Are you a Jobs doomer or an optimistic? Send me an email: Isabel.berwick@ft.com.

Office therapy

The problem: I have a good and stable job in a city where they are scarce. A new external person comes from Global HQ to direct our branch. New Boss is a microgestion, he is not listening to experts and continues to have consulting meetings (it used to be one) for “vision” of how things could change. We are all stressed and angry. Older colleagues talk about early retirement. I can’t afford to leave. How can I happen?

Isabel Council: I still know people who have had a similar experience, in different sectors. The broader context is that many workplaces are changing, very quickly, and sometimes leaders are almost in a “panic” about AI. The works will go, the works will change. That is the general panorama, and its work place once stable can never be the same again. (He will warm up, but work culture will be different).

We all get angry and get angry about a useless change. And this boss will change things, even if it is only to feed their own sense of purpose and importance (this has always happened, the great egos are a fact in the business). However, where appropriate, HQ sent this former consultant to his branch, so there may also be a broader plan.

His task now, if he chooses to accept it , is to rise above what is happening and see it as “high”. Do your job, do someone with whom the boss wants to speak and have in “vision” meetings; Then he will be able to get more information. What is the HQ plan and can you use that information to ensure your own work?

It is possible that you should take many short walks and breathe deeply in the bathroom to prevent it from going crazy or getting off too much. You will feel pain and anger, and this is in fact pain, for an office culture that was valuable and can now be lost. But do not bother you too much in angry gossip: listen, do not absorb. All this willpower pass .

Five main stories of the world of work

1. Why you should deceive your boss: The so -called polygamous work has reached the headlines, a phrase that describes remote workers who are doing more than one job without telling any of the employers. Emma Jacobs investigates.

2. Head of Operai Sam Altman: ‘This is the intelligence of Genius:’ Lunch with the FT is always a great reading, and this is no exception, but an advantage in this interview is that Sam Altman Cooks lunch for FT Roula Khalaf editor in her own kitchen.

3. The minimum wage now comes for white collar jobs: The minimum salary of the United Kingdom of £ 12.21 per hour is worth approximately £ 22,000- £ 25,500 for full-time work, depending on the hours worked. That is approaching, reports Sarah O’Connor, to the salaries of the lower steps in some white collar sectors such as Ti and Marketing.

4. Is the United Kingdom failing to your graduates? Delphine Strauss and Amy Borrett’s Aleccitorous Statistics on the postgraduate labor market. The value of a degree is still visible in life profits, up to £ 1mn for medicine, but there are great variations.

5. Microsoft A AX 3 percent of workers in the last round of employment cuts: The company did not confirm whether the cuts were driven by the efficiency led by AI, reports Rafe Uddin of the FT, but has previously said that it wants to optimize the average management.

One more thing. . .

The New York Times has a beautiful interactive piece that offers “The best advice I have heard about how to be happy“Compiled from the many Jancee Dunn interviews for the newspaper. My favorite comes from Jamil Zaki, from the Stanford’s social neuroscience laboratory, who suggests that” we propagate positive titbits about someone. “It may be a little known but admirable fact about that person, he said, or a friendly act in which he catches them.” Even better, “research suggests that spreading ‘positive gossip’ can encourage others to do it too.” Let’s try this at work .

A view of the work community

I love the photos taken from the desks or the roofs of the readers and I am aimed at publishing them all. This week’s balcony vision comes from Emily Griffiths, senior manager of the British Business Bank in Sheffield. She writes:

“Although much of the city center had to be rebuilt after World War II, the six -year -old floor of our 1920s, ‘Steel City House’, remains higher than most other buildings in the center of the city of Sheffield.”

Emily will receive a “salsa of luck” of the new management books and improvement of the life of working it-adjacent of the batteries of my desktop .

Send your office view (or relaxing photos of your dogs, cats and other co -workers) to: Isabel.berwick@ft.com