The impact of agentic AI - the evolving Human-AI partnership

The way we work is undergoing a seismic shift. We've moved from using computers as glorified typewriters to a world where AI augments human capabilities and, in some cases, even takes over entire roles. This evolution, particularly with the rise of agentic AI, demands a fundamental rethink of how we define roles and manage talent.

KPMGs research highlights, organisations are rapidly integrating AI into their operations. AI agents are not just tools; they are collaborators, designed to work alongside humans or autonomously to achieve specific goals. This necessitates a shift from simply filling roles to securing skills and strategically deciding whether humans or AI (or a blend of both) are best suited for particular tasks.

While there is agreement around the fundamental benefits that AI delivers for organisational performance, leaders are less clear on how to balance the need to adapt quickly to competitive market conditions vs protecting the stability expected by employees. It is a fact that AI has already fundamentally changed roles and that there are knock on consequences of this, many are negative. A report by Deloitte states that AI has shrunk or even removed the need for entry level roles - this denudes early career development opportunities and as mentioned by eQ8's Chris Hare poses a looming capability threat to organisations where a balance between financial and human performance over time is not well balanced.

The Enduring Need for Human Skills

While AI excels at automation and data analysis, human skills remain crucial. As KPMGs AI Pulse Survey indicates, leaders believe AI will automate tasks but not replace roles entirely. Instead, it will free up high performers to focus on more strategic work and help underperforming employees improve. Furthermore, Deloitte's research consistently emphasises that human capabilities like curiosity, emotional intelligence, divergent thinking, resilience, and adaptability are becoming even more critical. They underscore that organisations successfully fostering these human skills are significantly more likely to report strong financial results and create broader value. Similarly, KornFerry stresses that AI elevates the importance of uniquely human traits such as empathy, creativity, ethical decision-making, relationship building, and conflict resolution. Humans are essential for validating AI outputs, understanding nuanced contexts, and making judgments where AI alone falls short. These inherently human attributes provide the competitive edge that technology, no matter how advanced, cannot fully replicate.

There is a need therefore for governance structures and processes in this space to create visibility of the contribution of AI, to enable objective capability-based decisions as part of efficiency drives and to create new career opportunities for employees at the same time as removing roles that can be fulfilled purely by agentic AI.

Let's create a win:win outcome.

Being proactive: a Deliberate Approach to Role Recodification

Traditional job descriptions often fail to capture the nuances of this human-AI collaboration. Roles are not just being done faster; they are being fundamentally redefined. We need to articulate the distinct contributions of human and AI capabilities, impacting strategic workforce planning, organizational design, talent lifecycle management, skills mapping, and career architecture.

Successfully integrating AI and capitalizing on the game-changing differences agentic AI is making to employee effectiveness requires a deliberate and strategic approach to redefine and recodify role descriptions. This isn't merely an update; it’s a fundamental reimagining of what a role entails. Here’s a phased operational model to consider:

Phase 1: Analysis and Deconstruction Task Identification

• Break down existing roles into their fundamental tasks and sub-tasks.
• AI Suitability Assessment: For each task, assess its suitability for AI automation or augmentation. This requires understanding current and emerging AI capabilities, particularly agentic AIs ability to handle complex, multi-step processes.
• Human Value Proposition: Identify which tasks intrinsically require human cognitive abilities like creativity, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, complex problem-solving, ethical judgment, and interpersonal interaction.

Phase 2: Redefinition and Re-articulation

• Outcome-Based Role Design: Shift from task-based descriptions to outcome-based role definitions. What are the key results this redefined role (human + AI) is designed to achieve?
• Human-AI Interaction Models: Clearly articulate the interplay between human and AI functions within the role. This includes defining where AI agents take autonomous action, where they augment human decision-making, and where humans supervise or manage AI.
• New Skill Identification: Based on the new outcomes and interaction models, identify emerging skills required for human employees. These will likely include AI literacy, prompt engineering, data interpretation, ethical AI use, collaboration with AI systems, and a heightened focus on human-centric skills.
• Evaluation and Valuation: Re-evaluate roles based on their new outcomes and the criticality of the human and AI contributions. This can impact compensation, career pathways, and talent investment.

Phase 3: Integration and Implementation Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP)

• Alignment: Integrate these new role definitions into your SWP processes to accurately forecast future talent needs (human and AI).
• Organizational Design Impact: Review and potentially restructure organizational charts to reflect changes in work flows and accountability in a human-AI integrated environment.
• Talent Lifecycle Adjustment: Revamp talent acquisition, learning & development, performance management, and career architecture to align with the recodified roles and required skills. This means rethinking hiring profiles, designing targeted upskilling programs, and developing new performance metrics.
• Culture and Mindset Shift: Foster a culture of continuous learning, psychological safety, and experimentation. Employees must feel empowered to adapt and collaborate with AI, not threatened by it.

This deliberate approach to redefining roles has profound implications across the entire strategic HR and talent ecosystem. A well-crafted workforce strategy acts as a linchpin, seamlessly integrating the knock-on effects of role redesign. For HR enablers and capability owners it must enable a proactive and integrated approach to organisational redesign, capability development prioritisation, criticalities and capacity requirements, and requires an evolution of skill & competency frameworks and career architectures in order to cultivate future-ready capabilities.

Follow on work or 'knock on effects' include the requirement to integrate revised role criteria into the evolution of performance management, guide talent acquisition and intelligence efforts to identify and onboard individuals with the essential blend of human and AI collaboration skills. Without this intentional strategic foundation, the integration of AI risks becoming fragmented, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Strategic Implications: The UKs Defence Sector

This transformation is particularly relevant to sectors like defence, with its capability groups or professions (engineering, nuclear, digital, etc) in order to enable the delivery of significant new Defence capabilities. And partnerships between government, academia and , as highlighted in the UKs Strategic Defence Review 2025. The review emphasizes the need for innovation and adaptation to new technologies, including AI, to maintain a competitive edge. A deliberate approach to defining role and skill criticalities is crucial for effective capability development and meeting ambitious timelines, especially given the long time-to-competence for some critical roles and the political ambition of meeting deadlines in 2027 and 2030.

An integrated, systems approach: we need to work together!

Ultimately, a sector-level approach is needed to create capability-aligned norms and frameworks. This will enable organizations to define skills for roles effectively, clearly delineating human and AI responsibilities. As Nick Renner aptly points out, while skills-based approaches can be complicated, they are essential for navigating this evolving landscape.

The AI revolution is not just about technology; it’s about fundamentally reshaping how we work. By embracing a deliberate, strategic, and skills-focused approach, organisations can harness the power of AI to create a more efficient, innovative, and human-centric future of work.