HR leaders are increasingly being tasked with driving AI innovation enterprise-wide and many organizations putting HR at the helm of designing AI integration and adoption strategies. While HR is working side by side with functions like IT in this venture, one key group to tap is the frontline employees themselves.
According to a new report from agentic AI assistant platform Moveworks, non-technical employees are the real lynchpin in driving AI adoption. They are “leading a bottom-up transformation” and reshaping today’s workforce.
The survey of 200 IT executives at billion-dollar enterprises found that 91% of respondents said that, when it comes to agentic AI adoption, frontliners are playing a larger role than in past tech transformations. In fact, nearly 80% report that non-leaders or support staff have led agentic AI initiatives.
“Success is no longer about deep technical expertise, but about the ability to apply AI to real business problems,” Moveworks researchers write.
Seventy-eight percent said agentic AI has significantly or completely transformed their operations, while the same amount believe that successful agentic AI integration should involve contributions from employees across levels.
“AI is no longer something forced upon employees, it is something being built and steered by them,” according to Moveworks.
Not just ‘another IT project’
While research has linked advanced AI adoption with broad business outcomes, Moveworks’ research also predicts that it is bringing individual benefits to the workforce. Particularly at organizations that enable frontliners to drive AI innovation, there is a redistribution of “influence across the enterprise, shifting power from technical experts to non-technical, frontline employees.” In turn, this is opening new career pathways and accelerating upward mobility.
Like any transformation, this shift requires a more “agile, collaborative culture,” an implication most executives believe their organizations aren’t quite prepared for. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said their companies are underestimating the culture work needed to sustain AI transformation.
It’s not just a tech transformation, but a “cultural one,” says Bhavin Shah, CEO and co-founder of Moveworks.
“Viewing agentic AI as just another IT project misses the seismic shift happening across the enterprise,” Shah says. “The future of work won’t be created by those who bring in the most tools or apps. It will be built by those who eliminate friction and empower employees to work efficiently and easily.”
