WFM is expanding beyond forecasting and scheduling as contact centers adapt to AI-enabled operations.
Today, more providers are linking interaction analytics, quality management, coaching, knowledge, and performance data to give leaders a clearer view of what drives service outcomes.
Rather than measuring capacity solely through staffing levels and handle times, organizations are looking to understand where AI is creating or removing work and prove whether productivity gains translate into better CX or lower cost-to-serve.
At the same time, governance has become a central operational issue. Employees are adopting readily available AI tools faster than many enterprise programmes can provide approved alternatives.
Against this backdrop, vendors are now enabling continuous, data-led coaching to help managers develop teams while keeping pace with blended workforces.
Deloitte Finds UK Workers Are Spending Nearly £1BN on GenAI Tools
Nearly one in three British workers are using GenAI at work without employer knowledge, even as employees spend almost £1BN of their own money on tools each year.
Yesterday, Deloitte released the UK’s largest workforce survey on GenAI, ‘GenAI in the UK workforce’ with 25k respondents.
Hayley McKelvey, chief AI officer at Deloitte UK, argues the findings show employers must move beyond simply encouraging AI adoption.
“UK workers are showing they don’t want to wait for permission to use GenAI. Many are already using free tools or pay for premium versions themselves to help them get work done,” she said.
“The challenge is no longer getting people to use GenAI, it’s how businesses meet this growing demand in a way that is secure, responsible and creates lasting value for both the organization and its people.”
The survey found that AI demand is well ahead of the enterprise provision, as 63% have used GenAI for work, and 17% of users pay for a tool themselves.
For CX operations handling customer data within tightly governed processes, that gap presents a clear risk – Shadow AI.
If employees are using public tools for internal tasks without approved data controls, this can create security, compliance, and brand-risk issues during the critical moments when organizations are trying to improve productivity.
Regarding productivity, workers report saving an average of 70 minutes a week, but Deloitte found that only half of GenAI users say it currently saves them time.
Among those who do save time, 84% reportedly reinvest it in more work for the same employer, likely prompting WFM leaders to ask where capacity is actually appearing when a high volume of unmeasured activity is missing.
Without workflow-level measurement, businesses cannot convert individual efficiency into better service levels, reduced cost-to-serve or improved employee experience.
This creates a problem for managers, as half of GenAI users have had no formal training, with 65% not seeing convincing, well-informed leadership on GenAI, and 64% of weekly users worry managers will conclude the technology can do their job.
To ensure employee satisfaction and optimization, leaders should provide preapproved, role-specific tools with clear rules on permitted data and use cases, then train people to validate outputs and escalate errors.
Furthermore, managers should communicate that AI is intended to remove friction and strengthen judgment, and not be used as a tool to replace staff.
Solidroad and Unwrap Aim to Close the CX Insight-to-Training Gap
On Tuesday, the AI-powered training and coaching platform announced its partnership with customer intelligence platform Unwrap to turn insight into action.
As contact centers manage increasingly blended workforces of humans, AI agents and human-AI handoffs, Solidroad argues for the increasing need to understand performance across these different worker types.
By combining Unwrap’s analysis of customer interactions with Solidroad’s AI-powered training for both human and AI support agents, the partners aim to identify what is happening in customer conversations and turn those findings into targeted training and coaching for improved CX.
Mark Hughes, co-founder and CEO of Solidroad, helps teams identify recurring issues and convert those insights into targeted coaching for human and AI agents.
“Working with Unwrap has been a great partnership for us because our capabilities are really complementary,” he said.
“We see how a simulated conversation went. They see whether the problem behind it is showing up for a thousand other customers.”
Customer conversations often contain detailed evidence about where service is failing, but traditional quality assurance reviews only a small proportion of interactions.
As identified issues may take too long to reach training and coaching programs, Solidroad and Unwrap are attempting to shorten this feedback loop.
This includes using Unwrap’s SupportIQ to identify recurring issues and which approaches produce better outcomes, with Solidroad then turning those findings into targeted training scenarios for human and AI agents.
Traditional WFM has focused heavily on forecasting demand, scheduling employees and managing adherence, blended contact centers mean quality and capability become workforce planning considerations.
Microsoft’s most recent WEM approach connects forecasting and scheduling with quality evaluation, coaching, and performance signals, while explicitly planning for both human and AI capacity.
In regard to manual coaching, Solidroad says conversation analytics platforms can evaluate far more interactions than traditional manual QA, meaning training needs will likely be adjusted from broader workforce performance data.
The wider WEM market is moving in a similar direction, with platforms combining interaction analytics, quality monitoring, and targeted coaching.
“Putting those together means a team can spot an issue and start training agents on it right away,” Hughes continued.
“By combining our capabilities we’re creating something really meaningful for the industry.”
AceUp’s Ally 3.0 Brings Continuous AI Coaching Into Workplace Tools
Earlier last week, the AI coaching company announced the launch of Ally 3.0, an AI coaching agent designed to improve leadership coaching inside workspace tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.
By using contextual information, the AI agent gives employees continuous guidance on giving feedback, managing change, coaching colleagues, and improving performance.
Will Guillaume Foussier, CEO and Co-Founder of AceUp, explained that AI is making high-quality, ongoing leadership support more accessible, enabling organizations to develop skills at scale as workplace expectations evolve.
“We believe that human skill development will determine more than the success of organizations in the AI era,” he said.
“To make it a competitive edge, democratizing executive-level coaching to employees at every level is critical, and ongoing AI advancements are making it possible to turn this into a reality as we reimagine what the modern workplace looks like.”
As the workforce shifts to accommodate for the new AI era, organizations increasingly need technology to support managers between formal training sessions.
In fact, Writer’s 2026 AI adoption in the Enterprise survey found that 79% of organizations are facing AI adoption challenges, with only 35% of employees considering their manager an AI champion.
To keep up with competition as AI transforms workflows, managers are now expected to oversee larger, more complex AI-enabled teams, leaving less time for effective people management.
Ally 3.0’s persistent coaching memory and team-level context ensure neither is deprioritized because they allow development to continue between formal training sessions.
By enabling AI to provide managers with just-in-time support while giving organizations a way to build skills across the workforce, this ensures continuous development for their teams.
“Ally is already bringing this to life today, introducing a new standard for company culture where humans and AI work in tandem, and every employee’s potential is maximized in a way that’s meaningful for them, their teammates, and their organization,” Guillaume Foussier noted.
