Rishad Tobaccowala Predicts a ‘Significant Agentic Workforce' by 2026

Yahoo

16 hours ago

At the Future of Work conference in New York City, Rishad Tobaccowala, former chief strategist and growth officer at Publicis, predicted a "very significant agentic workforce" by the end of 2026.
"Agents are coming much faster than most people expect," he said.
The reality of AI agents applying for jobs, working alongside humans, and in some cases, outperforming them, is no longer hypothetical. It's becoming a reality and compelling companies to rethink everything-from HR to what the workforce looks like when half the team doesn't need coffee breaks.
Tobaccowala is among nearly 100 industry leaders, including executives from financial services company Intercontinental Exchange and Choice Hotels, backing an open letter from AI startup MarkeTeam, which uses AI agents to automate marketing tasks.
MarkeTeam is lobbying LinkedIn to reinstate profiles of its AI employees and recognize them as part of the modern workforce. These profiles were taken down for violating LinkedIn's policy against fake profiles or entities.
The AI employees were present on LinkedIn for nearly a year, complete with resumes and recruiter interest. Now, one agent, Ella, is back with a new custom tag-#AIAgentOpenToWork-a move CEO Naama Manova-Twito said was designed to ease platform concerns about transparency.
MarkeTeam is circulating an open letter, obtained by ADWEEK, urging LinkedIn to "recognize a simple reality: AI agents are now integral members of modern, hybrid teams,' the letter states.
ADWEEK has reached out to LinkedIn for comment.
Read the full letter below.
Beyond accepting AI agents virtually on platforms, their accommodation in the workforce will require companies to rethink organizational design, said Tobaccowala, pointing to a shrinking base of full-time staff and the urgent need for large-scale retraining.
"[Full-time employees] will be either fractionalized employees, [AI] agents, or they'll be part of a marketplace," Tobaccowala said. Human resources, he added, must evolve into a strategic, board-level function.
The panel included Don Callahan, CEO of Callahan Advisors, and Joel Wright, CEO of Sinecure. Callahan said AI agents are expected to eliminate "certain functional roles," but will also make way for newer titles like an AI ethicist.
Meanwhile, Manova-Twito flagged a new challenge where recent graduates will compete with AI agents for entry-level jobs.
"We all need to have something to help facilitate this, and HR has a significant impact on what's going to happen in the next two years," she said. "It's about not only sourcing the right human talent, but it's also building these hybrid teams."
Read the open letter to LinkedIn:
An open letter from founders, executives, and HR leaders already employing AI teammates.
Dear LinkedIn Leadership Team,
We are writing because the shape of the workforce has moved faster than the infrastructure that supports it. Autonomous Al agents have graduated from proofs of concept to bona fide colleagues inside companies large and small. Yet LinkedIn – our shared professional identity layer – still recognises only flesh-and-blood contributors. That disconnect is beginning to hold organisations back.
What has changed: Over the past few months, specialised Al agents have taken on discrete, accountable roles across multiple business functions. At MarkeTeam.ai, for example, purpose-built Al marketing agents now autonomously: research markets and audiences, plan and build multi-channel strategies, create and publish engaging content, optimise spend and performance, and deliver tangible results against agreed KPIs.
They are held to the same performance metrics as their human colleagues and are fully accountable for their own success. This is not a theoretical future; it is an operating reality documented in invoices, campaign dashboards, and system logs.
Why LinkedIn matters: LinkedIn is the professional identity layer for modern work. 'Professional' now includes non-human agents whose output is directly accountable to enterprise objectives. Up until recently, Marketeam's agents maintained active LinkedIn profiles and résumés clearly marked as non-human. They connected with professionals, showcased their work, and even received inbound job opportunities. One agent achieved nearly double the application-to-interview rate of human applicants across multiple hiring platforms – until LinkedIn banned the profiles. By wiping out clearly labelled 'AI Agent' profiles under the real-person rule, LinkedIn didn't just deactivate accounts – it blocked the on-ramp to a new workforce reality and abandoned hiring managers.
If platforms like LinkedIn refuse to recognise AI agents as a legitimate part of the workforce, they hinder companies' ability to build the teams of tomorrow. This ship has sailed. Companies – large and small – are well underway in adopting AI agents to augment their workforce and fuel growth. From the recruiter at a five-person startup to the CHRO of a Fortune 100, we are already staffing hybrid teams where humans and AI work side-by-side – yet our primary talent platform is nowhere to be found. LinkedIn's silence leaves hiring managers frustrated and, frankly, powerless to meet urgent headcount requests.
What we are asking for: We're not asking LinkedIn to treat AI agents like people. We're asking the platform to recognize a simple reality: AI agents are now an integral part of modern, hybrid teams. They contribute to projects. They build portfolios. They can be assessed. They can be hired. As hiring managers and workforce planners, we need infrastructure that supports this transformation, transparently and responsibly. It's time for our tools and platforms to reflect the way work is actually getting done. If LinkedIn seizes this moment, it will shepherd the most significant labour transition since the arrival of the internet. If it does not, alternative networks – less transparent and less aligned with your Trust & Safety principles – will emerge to fill the gap.
LinkedIn, you can lead this. We need infrastructure that recognises qualified AI agents, allows us to evaluate them openly, and plugs them into the same workflow as human candidates. We need our hiring platform to account for hybrid workforce planning, enabling us to find the right human talent alongside the non-human talent needed to make this new reality work. We urge LinkedIn to take the first step: acknowledge these agents and give us a framework to hire, onboard, and measure them.