47 Employees may be more prepared to embrace AI in the workplace than business leaders think. “They are more familiar with AI tools, they want more support and training, and they are more likely to believe AI will replace at least a third of their work in the near future,” according to McKinsey & Company’s Superagency in the Workplace report. Of the 3,613 employees surveyed, nearly all (94 per cent) said they were at least somewhat familiar with generative AI tools. Leaders need to understand how widely AI is already being used by their teams, and where the greatest potential lies. Microsoft is encouraging business leaders to consider how the technology can take on more cognitive, human-like tasks to support daily work. “When I think about AI’s current abilities, I consider these five key cognitive tasks: perceiving, understanding, reasoning, executing and creating,” says Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of AI at Work at Microsoft, in a column for the firm’s WorkLab publication. “Looking at how each is handled in your organisation today can help identify opportunities for AI to lighten the load.” Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk is among the firms to have already unlocked value from AI. It is using tools in Microsoft Azure to better understand the diseases it delivers treatments for. “AI is changing the way that we do drug discovery,” says Karin Conde-Knape, senior vice president of early development at Novo Nordisk. “With disease understanding, we can pinpoint a particular dysregulated biology to address. It’s AI helping you define where you position your treatment first rather than the way that we maybe normally approach it.” KPMG, meanwhile, is using Microsoft Copilot to reshape how it delivers its audit text and advisory services. “AI has given us a competitive advantage by changing our go-tomarket strategy by shortening the time it takes to work through analytical data,” says Kelle Fontenot, chief digital officer at KPMG, who explains how engaging in meetings with contextual information supported by Copilot has changed the relationships the firm has with its clients. Microsoft refers to organisations like these as ‘frontier firms’, successfully integrating AI agents into their operations. “A new organisational blueprint is emerging,” reads Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index. “One that blends machine intelligence with human judgement, building systems that are AI-operated but “When I think about AI’s current abilities, I consider five key tasks: perceiving, understanding, reasoning, executing and creating” JARED SPATARO, MICROSOFT
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