RIYADH: Transformative changes in the global workplace highlight important opportunities for Saudi organizations as Saudi Arabia moves forward with its ambitious Vision 2030.
Slack's latest Workforce Index study reveals an unprecedented surge in the adoption and impact of artificial intelligence, providing a clear path for Saudi businesses to lead in the era of digital labor, diversify the economy, and create high-value roles for the workforce of the future.
“Saudi Arabia has all the ingredients to lead this change: a young population, a government that is modernizing at an unprecedented rate, and an industry that is poised to compete globally,” Mohammad Al Kotani, senior vice president and general manager for Salesforce Middle East, told Arab News.
From implementation to benefits
The evidence that AI is a decisive competitive advantage is now overwhelming. A Slack survey of 5,000 desk workers around the world found that daily AI usage jumped 233% in just six months.
Employees who use AI daily are 64 percent more productive and 81 percent more satisfied with their jobs than their colleagues who don't use AI. This trend is even more pronounced in certain markets. In the UK, daily AI users report an 82% increase in productivity and a 106% increase in job satisfaction.
The report says this surge is fundamentally changing the shape of work. Data supports that trust increases with use. Employees who use AI agents daily are twice as likely to trust them in areas such as data protection and accuracy.
Additionally, AI enables employees to strategically expand their capabilities. Approximately 96% of AI users leverage this technology to perform tasks for which they previously lacked the skills.
Employees are now 154% more likely to use AI agents to not only automate tasks but also perform them more effectively and creatively. The biggest productivity gains come from eliminating extensive research, aiding communication, and overcoming creative blocks.
With this in mind, Al-Khotani stressed that it is the macroeconomic imperative for Saudi institutions to lead rather than follow.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries where the public sector has already set global benchmarks for digital service delivery. This has created a macroeconomic situation in which private sector organizations have to match the pace set by the state,” he said.
He further stated, “Saudi Arabia's transformation, megaprojects, tourism growth, manufacturing ramp-up, and new digital sector scale require productivity gains that only digital workers and AI agents can provide. Organizations that adopt early will be able to move faster, gain public trust, and capture market share.”
This view is echoed by Mohammad El Charif, founder of Qadi, the Middle East's first sovereign regulatory compliance platform.
“When we talk about digital labor in Saudi Arabia, we have to admit that legal and regulatory AI is not an option. If we wait and come in as fast followers, we will end up with core legal and regulatory workloads being run elsewhere, managed and updated elsewhere,” he explained to Arab News.
He argued that early adoption will yield lasting benefits: “Moving early with a governed sovereign agency will enable Saudi organizations to encode their own local laws, internal policies, escalation paths, and audit trails into their infrastructure.”
He added: “Under Vision 2030, Saudi major banks, insurance companies, telecoms and energy companies are not only serving the domestic market, but are also becoming global players. Building a regulatory backbone on their own terms early on will ensure they not only stay within the country, but also take that infrastructure with them as they expand.”
From automation to agent-based enterprise
This ground-level implementation aligns with the company's strategic axes identified in the 2025 MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark Report, developed in collaboration with Deloitte.
The report highlighted that generative AI is reshaping human-AI interactions and that the next frontier is the rise of the “agent enterprise.” This model includes autonomous AI agents that can operate with unprecedented independence, answering queries, managing advanced tasks, and optimizing workflows without continuous human intervention.
The report found that 93% of IT leaders plan to deploy such autonomous agents within two years, 40% have already deployed them, and a further 41% plan to deploy them within the next year.
This change is accelerating rapidly. The average number of AI models in use has already doubled compared to 2024 projections, and IT leaders predict it will increase by another 78% over the next three years.
Elaborating on this strategic potential, Salesforce Middle East's Al-Khotani said, “AI agents will bring synergies across sectors prioritized by Vision 2030. These same efficiencies can transform the economic landscape of various industries.”
He added, “Legacy departments can automate routine compliance, scheduling, documentation, onboarding, and incident resolution. Public services can move from being reactive to being proactive, anticipating citizen needs and completing tasks autonomously.”
Qadi's El-Charif described this as transforming compliance “from prevention to API” and accelerating Vision 2030 ambitions.
“For a thriving economy, the greatest gift we can give businesses is predictable, low-friction compliance. Encode local laws, regulations, and internal policies into agents, and those checks happen within the workflow. Without lowering standards, approvals can be completed in days instead of months,” he added.
However, this possibility is gated by integration. Approximately 95% of IT leaders cite integration challenges as the main barrier to effective AI adoption.
Organizations use an average of 897 applications, and 46% use more than 1,000 applications, but the level of integration has stagnated.
chance for the kingdom
For organizations in Saudi Arabia, moving early to AI adoption and integration is no longer an option, but a strategic necessity to lead in the digital workforce and achieve Vision 2030’s goals of a vibrant society, a prosperous economy, and an ambitious nation.
First, it's important to implement AI in a way that has positive outcomes for both the business and its employees. The Slack Index showed that AI enhances human connections, rather than replacing them.
People who use AI daily are 246% more likely to feel more connected to their colleagues and report a 62% higher sense of belonging. This shows that AI can enhance teamwork and culture, countering fears of eviction.
Highlighting the principle of active adoption, Al-Khotani said, “AI must be deployed as an enhancement, not a replacement. Once people understand that humans are focused on creativity, judgment, and customer relationships, while low-value tasks are handled by agents, the acceptance rate will be much higher.”
He added that Salesforce data shows that 84% of AI users say the technology makes their work more enjoyable, primarily because it reduces repetitive tasks.
El-Charif puts forward a framework of practical outcomes, workflows, and governance to enable this symbiosis. “We design the agent to take over the 'read, retrieve, adjust' loop.
“This won't replace humans, but it will lift humans out of the infrastructure quagmire.”
He added: “For me, this presents a real opportunity to use agent AI to remove the glue work that drains people and free up talent to focus on strategy, relationships, and judgment, which is exactly what Vision 2030 calls for excellence in our institutions.”
Agentic AI can directly accelerate Vision 2030 goals. As Goldman Sachs Research points out, generative AI can streamline business workflows, automate routine tasks, and create a new generation of business applications.
For Saudi Arabia, this means modernizing legacy sectors, increasing efficiency in healthcare and financial services, and revitalizing emerging industries.
MuleSoft's report confirms that APIs and API-related implementations now account for an average of 40% of enterprise revenue, up from 25% in 2018, demonstrating the tangible economic value of connected, AI-enabled infrastructure.
El-Sharif also highlighted the social aspect, saying: “For a vibrant society, this technology promotes transparency and trust. Once rules are encoded into agents, their application will be consistent and auditable. This will increase market confidence and investors will know that compliance is structural rather than subjective.”
Finally, this transition creates high-value roles for humans. The challenge of integration is itself a source of future work. MuleSoft reports that developers spend an estimated 39% of their time building custom integrations, and IT staffing budgets are expected to increase 61.5% year over year to meet AI demands.
Al-Khotani predicts that new and specific roles will emerge from the challenges of AI integration, saying: “According to Salesforce research, organizations that implement AI are expected to see their data and integration teams grow by nearly 50% over the next three years.”
He further explained that this will pave the way for new roles such as AI Integration Architect, Agent Workflow Designer, Responsible AI Officer and Digital Trust Specialist.
El-Charif noted that roles like “legal engineers” are emerging, people who understand both regulations and how to encode them into logic.
Additionally, as AI handles routine tasks, employees are free to engage in more strategic, creative, and innovative work, the very skills needed for a knowledge-based economy.
Al-Hotani envisioned the changes to improve Saudi Arabia's broader economic structure, saying, “As employees take on more day-to-day and administrative tasks, Saudi Arabia's workforce will move into higher-value roles that emphasize creativity, human judgment, and strategic decision-making.”
He added that this shift will improve per capita productivity, a core outcome of Vision 2030, as the workforce will no longer be limited by the amount of manual work it can handle. “Macroeconomic structures will become more innovation-driven and less labor-intensive.”
With the adoption of AI accelerating globally and its use dramatically increasing employee productivity and satisfaction, the next wave of enterprise value lies in agent AI.
The imperative for Saudi Arabia is to build a strong, integrated digital foundation today that enables organizations and employees not only to participate in this future, but to lead in it and transform the promise of Vision 2030 into an intelligent, automated and human-centric reality.
Mr Al Kotani concluded: “The economy of the future will reward not just automation, but countries that leverage AI to enhance human potential. Saudi Arabia stands to be one of them.”
