Knowledge workers in Asean are becoming more confident in using AI at work, driven by their personal use of AI, according to research commissioned by Salesforce, a customer service management technology company.
The survey, conducted by YouGov in February and March this year, polled 4,062 knowledge workers across Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
It found that 66 per cent of respondents said using AI in their personal lives had increased their trust in using AI tools at work. A further 69 per cent said personal use had boosted their confidence in using AI professionally.
The findings suggest that AI adoption in the workplace is increasingly being shaped from the ground up, as employees bring familiarity with consumer AI tools into their professional environments.
This trend is especially pronounced among younger workers. The group with highest levels of trust and confidence in using AI tools at work is Gen Z, with 72 per cent report having high confidence in AI and 69 per cent saying they have high trust in AI.
The study found that only 3 per cent of Asean knowledge workers believe that they will never use AI agents while 75 per cent are using or have interacted with agentic AI.
Skills gap could limit enterprise AI value
However, Salesforce warned about a growing skills and knowledge gap that prevents organisations from fully leveraging the use of agentic AI.
According to the survey, 42 per cent of respondents want to better understand the skills they need to develop for the AI era, with the majority receiving limited training on agentic AI. Just 26 per cent say their companies are investing in new tools and forums for peer-to-peer AI agent knowledge sharing.
Salesforce also warned that if companies do not provide workers with the use of enterprise-grade AI solutions, it could result in the rise of shadow AI, where the tools used operate outside the organisation’s visibility or control. This could give rise to security vulnerabilities and the exposure of sensitive data.
The lack of these skills could also lead to further problems. Employees who have not mastered prompt engineering or fact-checking outputs can accidentally introduce inaccuracies and cause their organisatoin to run into compliance issues.
“For businesses, this is a clear signal to move,” said Paul Carvouni, senior vice president and general manager, Salesforce Asean.
“Our workforce is ready, but it is up to organisations to provide the secure, enterprise-grade frameworks and skills support that turns personal use of AI into a coordinated engine for growth and innovation in the agentic enterprise,” he added.
AI expected to reshape work roles
Asean knowledge workers believe that AI will change their jobs, with 74 per cent saying that their job will change at least moderately as tasks are shared with AI agents.
In terms of how AI will affect their work, 35 per cent said they expect to use AI agents both to automate some tasks and augment others. Another 39 per cent said they expect AI agents to enhance their performance beyond simple automation, while 16 per cent saw AI mainly as a tool for automating tasks.
Some 51 per cent of survey respondents expect AI to enhance their speed of completing tasks, while 34 per cent expect AI to enhance the quality of their work.
Currently, the top three ways in which AI agents are currently augmenting workers in Asean are: providing quick access to information and eliminating the need for extensive research (48 per cent); assisting with writing and communication (45 per cent); and helping to brainstorm ideas and overcome creativity block (43 per cent).
According to the survey, 38 per cent of respondents identified data analysis and interpretation as the most important future skill in the agentic AI era. This is followed by creative thinking at 35 per cent and problem solving at 34 per cent.
The research also suggests that personal AI use is changing what workers expect as consumers. Some 46 per cent of respondents said they now expect faster and more efficient services from businesses they interact with.
Another 45 per cent expect greater accuracy and fewer errors, while 41 per cent expect more innovative or intelligent solutions. Only 9 per cent said their expectations had remained unchanged.
