Salesforce’s head of talent growth and development shares how the tech giant is training its 72,000 employees on agentic AI

AI agents have been all the rage in HR tech lately.

No clue what we’re talking about? Agentic AI is essentially AI technology that can complete tasks without prompts from humans. Many HR tech giants, including Oracle, Workday, and ServiceNow, have been betting big on the technology.

Salesforce unveiled its autonomous Agentforce in September. It can be used externally and internally, “out of the box” or customized. HR Brew caught up with Lori Castillo Martinez, Salesforce’s EVP of talent growth and development, to discuss how her team is preparing the enterprise software firm’s 72,000+ employees to use the new technology.

“This rise of digital labor powered by AI agents is truly reshaping the way our businesses operate, the way our jobs are being formed,” Castillo Martinez told HR Brew. “In order for any of us to really be successful in our careers, we’re going to need this new set of skills. Everyone’s going to need to think about their roles differently. So for us, reskilling is more critical and urgent than ever.”

Take stock. Before implementing any upskilling initiatives, Salesforce created a workforce innovation team within Castillo Martinez’s department. The team is focused on understanding how jobs are evolving, and ensuring Salesforce’s talent remains up-to-date.

Her team, using Salesforce’s LLM and outside industry research, identified the top 10 skills employees would need to be successful with AI agents. They fell into three categories:

• Human skills, similar to “soft” skills, including adaptability, accountability, collaboration, and emotional intelligence.
• Agent skills, focused on AI literacy, and human-agent collaboration. (The latter hinges on workers’ familiarity with the basics of AI and agentic tools, Castillo Martinez said.)
• Business skills, which integrate AI-related skills into day-to-day work, including problem solving, data interpretation, creative thinking, and storytelling.

L&D approach. Castillo Martinez’s team takes multiple approaches to training. The first involves encouraging learning and experimentation with AI tools. Her team’s goal for 2025 is to help 80% of employees attain fundamental AI skills.

“We really acknowledge that there might be a sense of fear and overwhelm when it comes to learning these new skills,” Castillo Martinez said. “So there’s some fundamentals we’re trying to do in the organization, which is creating this culture of continuous learning, and our main focus is giving all our employees the fundamental tools and resources that they need to succeed.”

One way her team is facilitating that is through Salesforce’s internal talent marketplace. Called Career Connect, it has its own AI agent that serves as a career coach, giving personalized recommendations based on employees’ skills and roles, and suggesting content in Salesforce’s Trailhead learning platform.

Castillo Martinez’s team is also prioritizing in-person learning. With quarterly learning days, for example, employees have access to learning stations, where they can build AI agents, or attend lectures by external experts. Half of one learning day is also dedicated to curriculums designed for specific functions, so employees can learn AI skills relevant to their own roles.

Beyond AI-specific training, Salesforce also encourages employees to pursue internal and external learning opportunities, such as using its Trailhead platform or its tuition reimbursement benefit.

Lessons learned. Castillo Martinez and her team have learned that introducing AI agents is not a one-and-done process. Different teams are still finding use cases and ways to deploy the technology.

“The biggest learning is truly that we are still learning, and we don’t have all the answers yet, to some degree,” she said. “But the urgency itself is around the reskilling and the learning and making sure that every company has a talent strategy. For us, we know Agentforce is going to be the backbone of our talent strategy, and we're going to continue to invest in our talent and bringing our employees along.”

That emphasis on reskilling for AI is something she wants other HR leaders to focus on right now. Unfortunately, some aren’t.

“I’m not sure there’s a future where, as an HR professional, you can’t think about this topic,” Castillo Martinez said. “I think it’s the future that’s coming, and every HR professional should be thinking about how to operationalize that within their organization. It’s good for employees, and it’s good for us as companies to be really intentional about incorporating that into our talent strategy.”