Why Trust Is the Central Issue in Workplace Agentic AI
Agentic AI refers to artificial intelligence systems designed to act as autonomous agents – they don’t just respond to prompts, but can set goals, make decisions, take actions, and adapt over time to achieve desired outcomes, often with minimal human intervention. If you’re leading agentic AI adoption in an enterprise, you might expect the biggest challenges to be technical – model accuracy, integration complexity, scale.
In reality, the most difficult question is human: how do you introduce increasingly autonomous AI without unsettling the people it’s meant to support?
As agentic AI takes on tasks that resemble “thinking” – from interpreting natural language requests to executing multi-step actions across systems – employees are not just noticing what AI can do, but what it sees, decides, and influences. When those boundaries aren’t clear, trust erodes fast, and adoption stalls.
Trust has become the defining barrier to AI at work – not because the technology isn’t capable, but because people matter most in how it’s used.
Why Employees Resist AI
According to the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2024, more than half of employees worry AI will replace parts of their job, while nearly half are concerned about how AI uses their data. PwC research reinforces the issue: although trustworthy AI is essential for sustained value, only 39% of employees say they trust how organisations deploy AI today.
Leaders must acknowledge that fear isn’t abstract; it’s rooted in how AI is introduced and governed across everyday tools.
AI governance is not just an IT compliance task – it is a cornerstone of employee experience, engagement, and long-term innovation success.
What Responsible AI Looks Like in Practice
Some organisations are taking a people-first approach that balances innovation with transparency and accountability.
Coca-Cola Consolidated: Scaling With AI Without Scaling Support Burden
For Coca-Cola Consolidated – North America’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler with over 17,000 employees – rapid growth posed a support challenge: how to empower employees while keeping support teams lean.
The solution was deploying Moveworks, an agentic AI assistant platform that automates employee support and routine requests directly within familiar tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.
According to Retha Summers, IT Director at Coca-Cola Consolidated:
“Our biggest challenge was giving everyone a better experience with technology – and making our people more productive.”
By automating tasks like password resets and enabling a wider range of employees to build AI-assisted workflows using Moveworks’ Agent Studio, Coca-Cola Consolidated maintained support capacity even as its workforce tripled.
This deployment wasn’t just about automation – it was about shifting mindset and capability. Business users without technical backgrounds participated in creating solutions, which fostered ownership and trust rather than fear of surveillance or replacement.
Coca-Cola Consolidated’s experience provides a practical model: start small, target real pain points, and use AI platforms that invite participation, not just execution.
What Moveworks’ Agentic AI Platform Brings to the Table
Moveworks is an enterprise-grade agentic AI Assistant platform designed to streamline workflows for large organisations. Rather than just generating responses, Moveworks combines natural language understanding with a reasoning engine that can:
- Understand employee intent expressed in everyday language
- Interpret context across systems and data sources
- Execute tasks end-to-end across applications like HR systems, ITSM, and collaboration tools
- Automate workflows like approvals, employee service requests, and resource access
- Build and deploy specialised AI agents using low-code tools such as Agent Studio
These capabilities position agentic AI platforms like Moveworks not just as assistants, but as workplace workflow orchestrators that help employees find answers and complete work without unnecessary friction.
What differentiates agentic AI from traditional automation is its ability to reason, plan, and act across connected systems – moving beyond single-task responses toward multi-step operational outcomes.
How to Deploy Agentic AI Safely and Fairly in an Enterprise
Technology alone doesn’t create trust. What matters is how you govern it.
Moveworks’ own Trustworthy AI in HR guide (co-authored with enterprise leaders and HR practitioners) outlines core principles for responsible deployment:
- Build Cross-Functional Governance
AI governance should not live in IT alone. Effective oversight requires collaboration between HR, IT, Legal, and Security. Establishing a small working group or AI council ensures regular review of tools, outcomes, and standards.
- Safeguard Employee Data
Teams must be clear about what data AI systems access, where it is stored, and how long it is retained. Role-based access controls and transparent policies help employees see privacy as protection, not surveillance.
- Embed Fairness and Transparency
Fair AI practices require both technical and human checks. Simple, human-centered questions — such as “Can we explain how the AI makes decisions?” — reveal whether a system is ready for responsible use.
- Empower People Through AI Literacy
Employees adopt more readily when they understand why and how AI is used. Clear messaging (“AI makes work easier, not monitors you”) reduces anxiety and reinforces agency.
- Measure Trust and Adoption
Continuous evaluation of how AI impacts adoption and sentiment helps organisations refine governance and communication strategies over time.
These principles reinforce that responsible AI is not just a technical implementation; it’s an organisational practice that must align with values, transparency, and human-centered governance.
Why Leadership and Communication Still Matter Most
Even with the best platforms, AI cannot replace effective leadership. Trust emerges when leaders:
- Address concerns about surveillance or misuse openly
- Train managers to contextualise AI insights for their teams
- Reinforce that AI augments roles, rather than quietly redefining them
In this sense, transparency isn’t a compliance checkbox – it’s a continuous change-management discipline.
Your Playbook: Adopt Agentic AI Without Breaking Spirits
For organisations at any stage of AI adoption:
- Make AI visible: Employees should always know when AI is acting
- Design for oversight: Human accountability must be explicit
- Communicate data boundaries: Silence fuels fear
- Position AI as a partner: Not a performance judge
- Link trust to outcomes: Adoption and retention depend on it
Deploying agentic AI is ultimately about shaping experience, not just capabilities.
The Real Competitive Advantage of Agentic AI
Agentic AI will redefine how work gets done. But organisations that succeed won’t be the ones moving fastest — they’ll be the ones moving clearest.
Trust, transparency, and communication are as critical as automation. By learning from real deployments like Coca-Cola Consolidated and aligning with governance frameworks like those outlined in Moveworks’ guide, leaders can ensure that agentic AI amplifies human potential rather than undermining it.
The future of AI at work isn’t autonomous – it’s accountable.
