The McKinsey Podcast The future of work is agentic
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Jan 2, 2026 Jorge Amar, a Senior Partner at McKinsey specializing in the future of work, dives into the rapidly evolving landscape of AI in the workplace. He discusses how agentic AI is not just a tool but an active participant in decision-making. The conversation highlights its transformative role across sectors like HR and customer service while addressing the challenges of blending human and AI capabilities. Amar also touches on generational preferences in customer support, revealing that even tech-savvy Gen Z often seeks human interactions.
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Agents Create New Capacity And Business Options
- Agentic AI creates capacity by automating tasks and forces decisions on whether to reduce headcount or redeploy humans.
- It also enables novel personalized services and workflows that weren't economically viable before.
Design And Tune Agents From Business Needs
- Build agents with clear business rationale, subject-matter experts, curated data, and prompt-engineering skills.
- Tune agents continuously to keep training data accurate and relevant.
Make Adoption A Cross-Functional Effort
- Coordinate IT, business owners, and HR: IT builds infrastructure, business defines needs, HR drives adoption and change management.
- Use HR to re-skill workers, manage incentives, and communicate the change story effectively.