Salesforce CPO: Competitive advantage with agentic AI comes from the workforce, not the technology

Organizations are in a “transformational moment” – the C-Suite is focused on one question: How to unlock the potential of agentic AI?

That’s how Salesforce’s Chief People Officer Nathalie Scardino kicked off a recent media roundtable – UNLEASH was among select media in attendance.

It is well known that Salesforce has gone big on AI, and particularly agentic.

In fact, CEO Marc Benioff has stated that he’s “never been more excited about anything in my career” – this is “not just another piece of software”.

We are delivering digital labor – digital labor is the new horizon for business”.

However, the $38 billion enterprise tech giant is aware that having great “technology alone is not a strategy”, stated Scardino.

This echoes Benioff’s statements that “the technology is awesome, but it is about humans with AI driving that success together”.

Scardino agreed; what will differentiate successful companies is their ability to seize the “workforce advantage”, and truly integrate AI into core workflows. This will benefit employees, with AI agents providing agency because people have “more control over how they work”.

To seize this workforce competitive differentiator, in the view of Scardino and the enterprise tech giant, organizations need to build AI fluency – meaning employee confidence and skills to use AI to drive value.

The question that remain is how do you build this AI fluency within your organization? Salesforce is leading by example as ‘customer zero’ of its own agentic AI projects, but it is also sharing its learnings.

Following the media roundtable, Salesforce launched an AI fluency playbook.

Let’s take a look under the curtain of Salesforce’s progress to date with the playbook, and explore how HR leaders should be thinking about AI fluency within their own organizations.

Inside Salesforce’s AI fluency success

Data from Salesforce-owned Slack shows that those who use AI every day report 64% higher productivity, 58% better focus and 81% higher job satisfaction than those not embracing the technology.

This is confirmed by Salesforce’s own internal employee survey data.

Scardino shared during the roundtable that the tech giant has been on a journey over the past 18 months around AI fluency – and now 85% of employees feel confident using AI.

Plus, 87% of ‘power users’ say AI helps them to do interesting work, and leveraging its own Agentforce technology in Slack saved Salesforce’s 76,000 workers 500,000 hours last year.

Scardino noted: “I don’t know a team that isn’t leveraging agents in daily workflows”.

She is clear that Salesforce employees have crossed the “chasm” of the first stage of AI fluency – AI engagement – but there’s still work to do on the second two elements: AI activation and AI expertise.

There’s a need to drive AI activation by building up the habit of consistent AI usage and to improve AI expertise by seeing tools as more than an assistant, but a true catalyst of work that unlocks value in new ways.

That’s how Ruth Hickin, Salesforce’s VP of Workforce Innovation, described it during the media roundtable.

She described adaptability, problem solving, and human-AI collaboration as the three core skills needed to build AI fluency.

Fluency in AI becomes particularly important, in Scardino’s words, because the roles she and her team are hiring for today aren’t the ones they were hiring for a year ago.

She shared the example of having recently brought on board an Agentic Head of Talent – this proves that HR as a function is also being redefined in this world of work.

To drive further progress in AI fluency, particularly the AI activation and AI expertise elements, Scardino talked about leaning on managers.

The “role of the manager is more critical than ever” – as Salesforce’s employee survey found a 21 percentage point increase in the impact managers modelling AI use has on employee confidence with the tools.

In addition, she is going to work with Salesforce’s Chief Digital Officer to provide more access to tools for employees.

The important link between HR and IT has become solidified in this AI reality of work – Greg Shewmaker, CEO of r.Potential, was also on the media roundtable, and he was clear that AI cannot be “a truly AI project”, this is a people challenge (not just a technology one).

Companies that are still treating this as an IT project are the ones that are struggling.”

His advice is for leaders to be really honest about where they are at, where they want to go, and embrace the reality that this AI transformation is not “one and done”.

There will be continuous challenges, and changes, the key is to focus on empowering individuals, teams and organizations to realize their potential.