Editorial
Productivity boosts. Faster output. New capabilities. By now, we are all familiar with the promise of AI. But if you’ve ever tried to scale it within an organization, you know there’s a real psychological barrier to overcome.
Employees hesitate not because the tools don’t work, but because we’re not used to letting them work autonomously for us. Agentic AI requires a mindset shift from self-service tools to true delegation. This is as much about giving up control as it is about trust. We’re comfortable using tools as long as we can orchestrate them ourselves, but agents demand that we hand over some of that control and let the system orchestrate the work until the outcome is complete. The key difference is that tools need our intervention, while agents can act independently, and embracing that shift is what will drive their real value.
Internal communicators know this terrain well. They’ve long been the bridge between leadership vision and employee reality. That’s why internal comms has to be in the driver’s seat for AI adoption.
Getting Comfortable With Delegation
Handing over tasks to an AI agent means confronting old instincts about control and perfection. We’ve grown comfortable juggling self‑service tools, even when it means taking on more of the work ourselves. Delegating to AI requires a different kind of trust.
But experience changes perception. Remember when people resisted recording a video call or using a virtual note‑taker? Now, both are commonplace. Agentic AI will follow the same path from comfort to acceptance.
Gallagher’s 2025 Employee Communications Report revealed that 35% of communicators are undecided on how transparent to be about AI use, while 38% of organizations have no AI governance at all.
This is the tension that many organizations face. Control is essential for building trust, but excessive caution or insufficient structure can hinder progress. The answer is balance: delegating with confidence while maintaining clear guardrails and human oversight — even as agents operate continuously, without the limits of traditional downtime.
Related Article: Trusting AI Agents at Work: What Employees Really Want
Agents as Teammates
When we work, we naturally cycle through three steps: thinking, planning, acting.
With agentic AI, for the first time, technology can do all three. Agents have the brain, memory and tools to work in a way similar to us. And in acting, they can even delegate to another agent better suited to the task.
This is why collaborating with agents is the future of work. Agents know the goal and help us get there faster. They take low-value tasks off our plates. And unlike humans, they don’t tire or lose focus. Your AI teammate is just as effective in the eighth hour as in the first.
That leaves humans to focus on the work that delivers the most business value and impact, keeping us in the zone.
The Opportunity for Comms Teams
Internal comms teams face constant pressure. In that same Gallagher report, 44% of professionals cite change fatigue and 49% cite lack of time or resources as their biggest barriers. Agents can be the relief valve that frees up much-needed capacity.
In fact, time-strapped functions like IC have the most to gain from agentic AI. Agents can perform high-value work on our behalf, allowing communicators to focus on strategic listening, engagement and clarity.
AI also brings sharper insight. Beyond saving time, it reveals patterns in sentiment and engagement that give a clearer view of what employees need. That intelligence elevates comms from message delivery to strategic guidance.
And because IC sits at the heart of the organization, it can set the tone for everyone else. By leading responsible AI adoption, communicators not only improve their own effectiveness but model how the rest of the business can embed AI.
The 2 Keys to Building Trust
So, how do we shift mindsets to embrace delegation to AI? I believe it starts with transparency and convenience.
Transparency means employees can see how AI is being used, understand where their data is going and have safeguards in place to exercise judgment. As I like to say, we don’t let the power tool measure. AI should augment employee skills and expertise, not replace them.
Convenience is also critical. If new technology makes life easier, more people are willing to try it. But if the experience is clunky or the output is poor, adoption stalls. An intuitive experience lowers barriers for employees to embrace AI without fear.
When transparency and convenience come together, adoption shifts from trusting the machine to trusting the outcome.
It’s Already Happening
The impact of AI isn’t hypothetical. McKinsey reported that by March 2025, 78% of organizations were already using AI in at least one business function, and 71% had embedded generative AI into daily work.
In a 2025 UK government trial, Microsoft Copilot users saved an average of 26 minutes per day (with some saving over an hour). More than 80% said they didn’t want to stop using it.
Gallagher’s research shows 8 in 10 communicators are open to AI assisting with content creation, and 25% would allow AI to fully handle administrative tasks.
The bottom line is that AI is already relieving the pressure of unproductive activities. That leaves communicators free to focus on the big stuff: shaping culture, connecting employees to strategy and helping organizations move forward with clarity.
Related Article: AI in Internal Comms: From Job Threat to Trust Builder
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Internal Comms Leading the Way
As agentic AI rolls out within organizations, success will hinge on what’s known as the psychology of delegation — understanding the mental and emotional factors behind how we assign tasks and how those tasks are received.
The hardest part of adoption isn’t necessarily the technology; it’s getting comfortable with letting go, trusting agents to do work on our behalf, while staying in the loop.
Communicators can help organizations make that leap. By showing how to balance delegation with oversight, comms professionals enhance their own function and set the blueprint for the enterprise.
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