Dubai, UAE,May 2026 — On International HR Day, workforce and AI transformation experts are urging HR leaders to move beyond the productivity narrative and take ownership of the strategic decisions that will determine whether agentic AI delivers lasting value or creates lasting disruption.
While artificial intelligence agents are increasingly capable of handling large volumes of work autonomously, advisors warn that the organisational decisions made at the point of adoption will determine whether that capability is ever fully realised. The businesses seeing the strongest returns in productivity and customer outcomes share a common trait: even at this early stage of their agentic transformation, they are investing in workforce redesign proactively rather than reactively.
Mohammed Alkhotani, Middle East’s General Manager and Senior Vice President at Salesforce, comments:
“The conversation around AI often begins with productivity, but the bigger opportunity is really about how work, and the workforce, evolves.
AI has the ability to create significant capacity within organisations, helping teams move faster, operate at greater scale, and rethink how work gets done. But the real value is not simply in efficiency, it is in what organisations choose to do with that capacity.
The most forward-thinking organisations will use this moment to create more space for people to focus on higher-value work, work that requires judgment, creativity, innovation, relationship-building, and the uniquely human capabilities that technology cannot replace.
That is where AI moves from being a technology conversation to becoming a leadership conversation. And this is where HR has a critical role to play.
Digital transformation has often been associated with uncertainty and hesitation, particularly when people are unclear about what change means for their role or future, but if approached in the right way, it could create one of the biggest workforce opportunities we have seen in decades.
It opens the door to rethinking how work is designed, building new skills, redeploying talent into more meaningful, higher-value roles, and preparing the next generation of employees for a very different world of work.
The World Economic Forum projects that 39% of existing skill sets will be transformed or outdated by 2030, making reskilling, AI fluency, data literacy, and systems thinking business priorities today, not optional investments for tomorrow.
Across our region, from the UAE to Saudi Arabia, we are already seeing national agendas place workforce readiness, digital capability, and human potential at the centre of economic transformation. Organisations should be thinking the same way.
At Salesforce, we believe the most powerful AI strategies are the ones that combine human ingenuity with trusted technology, using AI to unlock capacity while enabling people to focus on higher-value work.
For leaders, that means looking beyond technology deployment and asking a bigger question of how do we bring our people with us?
Organisations that invest in reskilling, redeploying talent, and supporting employees through change will ultimately build a workforce that is more agile, more capable, and more prepared for the future.
On International HR Day, it is a timely reminder that technology transformation and workforce transformation must go hand in hand.
The future of work will not be defined by AI alone, but by leaders who use it to unlock human potential.”
