Leading in the AI era

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There is considerable debate over how deeply AI will affect certain jobs, and one new study suggests that impact will reshape more than half of peoples’ working hours.

That’s the word out a new survey report from Wharton School and Accenture, which estimates that more than 50% of working hours are expected to be impacted by AI agents.

The analysis defines a “minimum viable” AI-driven organization as one with at least 60 enterprise agents – 35 digital and 25 physical – that can support work across functions such as research and development, manufacturing, human resources, finance, and customer service. A company pursuing “aggressive modeling scenarios.” can anticipate 10% growth, the researchers predict.

The report cites the Wharton-Accenture Skills Index, which reveals a shift from a role-based to a skill-based job market. To anticipate how companies will integrate AI, the Accenture-Wharton team analyzed tasks and roles using occupation-level data from O*NET and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The industry most heavily affected by digital agents is banking, followed by high-tech and capital markets. Robotic agents are shaping natural resources, consumer goods and services, and chemicals.

% hours impacted by approximately 60 agents across industries (Working hours impacted by digital agents)

Digital agents Robotic agents

Banking 49% 2%

High tech 37% 15%

Capital markets 46% 3%

Insurance 45% 3%

Software and platforms 45% 2%

Public service 36% 2%

Life sciences 32% 24%

Natural resources 25% 33%

CG&S 29% 29%

Chemicals 30% 27%

Looking across use cases, a clear structural pattern emerges, according to the report. "Leading organizations are moving beyond isolated solutions and instead relying on a coordinated set of digital and physical agents that operate under human direction."

Still, at this point, the researchers conclude that the productivity gained from AI "does not translate cleanly into lower costs," the report says. Roughly two-thirds of productivity gains materialized as direct cost savings, while one-third appeared as cost avoidance, capacity freed to do different, higher-value work. "Without intentional redeployment, that avoided cost does not become growth.”

The Accenture-Wharton team recommends the following actions:

• Set explicit, top-down profit-and-loss priorities: “Reinvent the enterprise around a human-plus workforce,” the researchers urged. "Make deliberate choices about where to invest and redeploy capacity, focusing on the areas that drive growth and differentiation. Without this top-down focus, agentic initiatives will become isolated productivity efforts rather than transformative growth engines."
• Design human-led operating models for agentic work: Define what an “agent is and how agents are embedded into workflows and decision flows," they state. "Define boundaries, escalation paths, decision rights and accountability so responsibility for outcomes, risk and trust remains clearly owned."
• Reinvent the enterprise around a human-plus workforce: Show employees "that a redesigned, human-in-the-lead role is not only more effective, but often a better experience, as routine tasks are delegated to agents and employees focus on higher-level skills.”
• Evaluate talent through a skills lens versus a roles lens: Move beyond static job architectures “to a skills-based view of the workforce, informed by data. Architect this change, embed it into key performance management processes and communicate to individuals in the language of skills."
• Embrace opportunities as employer, educator and learner: The researchers urge active support for continuous learning "so people can effectively supervise, guide and collaborate with intelligent systems. Prepare people not just for their next role, but for lifelong participation in a co-intelligent economy.”