Onboarding Digital Labor: A Three-Step Playbook

The Problem: 95% of AI Implementations Fail But Yours Doesn’t Have To

According to a recent MIT report 95% of generative AI pilots fail. That failure rate isn’t because the technology lacks potential, it’s because most organizations treat AI like software to configure, not employees to onboard.

At Asymbl, we think differently. We don’t implement AI, we onboard it.

This mindset shift from “AI as software” to “AI as coworker” defines the next era of workforce orchestration.  When our company entered a period of explosive growth, expanding roles across Sales, People Ops, Development, and Business Analysis. We realized traditional hiring couldn’t keep up.  So, we built a model where human and digital workers operate side by side, each doing the work they’re best suited for.

We recently discussed this very transformation, how to assemble the hybrid workforce of the future, on stage at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference, alongside Mark Grimwood, SVP of Global Sales & Distribution Recruiting and Global Talent Attraction. Together, we explored what it takes to blend human and digital workers to achieve real business outcomes, not theoretical promise.

Today, at Asymbl we have over 60 digital workers across 10 business functions. To lead this transformation, we even appointed a Chief Digital Labor Officer, with a mandate to achieve 20% agentic capacity by the end of 2025 and 40% in 2026.

Each of our digital workers is onboarded like a human employee, following a three-part framework that defines roles, onboards them into the flow of work, and provides ongoing coaching. 

Here’s a deeper dive into that framework.

Step 1: Define the Role and the Motivation Behind It

You wouldn’t hire a person to “do emails.” You’d hire them for a role with a purpose and a team to collaborate with. The same applies when you’re hiring digital labor.

Digital labor refers to the full spectrum of intelligent technologies, predictive, generative, agents, and automated AI solutions that perform defined roles within an organization. These digital workers operate alongside humans to accelerate output, improve consistency, and expand capacity across every function of your business. 

Defining a digital worker role goes beyond “automation use cases” to clarifying the why behind the work. Write an actual job description, define working hours, set tone, guardrails, and align measurable outcomes. The most successful organizations rethink digital workers by matching tasks to motivation rather than technology.

Humans and digital workers thrive in different roles. Humans excel in jobs that require creativity, empathy, or nuanced judgment, while digital workers perform best on tasks that leverage consistent reasoning and routine processing.

Understanding the motivation behind every job to be done is the key to assigning roles to the employees that are best equipped to succeed:

• If a task is speed-motivated, like scheduling hundreds of interviews for a seasonal hiring surge, digital workers excel.
• If a task is trust-motivated, like recruiting executives or nurturing high-value relationships, humans should lead.
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This type of distinction of speed versus trust creates a hybrid workforce that works in harmony. It’s not about replacing people; it’s about orchestrating the right kind of intelligence for the right outcomes.

Step 2: Onboard into the Flow of Work

Onboarding digital labor is not the same as configuring software. Configuration is table stakes across setting up technology, connecting data, and aligning systems. But success comes when digital workers are inserted directly into the flow of work.

Just as you wouldn’t consider a human worker “onboarded” after sending their laptop and login credentials, you can’t stop at technical setup. Effective onboarding means integrating digital workers into the real environments, tools, and rhythms where business happens so agents can observe, contribute, and improve alongside their human teammates.

At Asymbl, onboarding is where digital workers move from configured to contributing.

• Our sales agent works inside Salesforce, with a real email account and live lead lists.
• Our People Ops agent operates in Slack, interacting with employees in real time.
• Our developers’ assistants live in the same environments as our engineering teams.

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When digital workers are truly embedded inside the flow of work, the results compound. They learn faster, respond to real-world conditions, and surface insights that help human teammates make better decisions. Instead of creating a separate AI initiative, you’re elevating the teams you already have, building a workforce that’s unified, scalable, and adaptive by design. 

Step 3: Coach and Scale 

Onboarding digital workers isn’t a setup checklist, it’s a management practice.

You wouldn’t expect a new hire to thrive without coaching. The same is true for digital workers. At Asymbl, each digital worker has a manager who conducts weekly performance reviews alongside our AgentOps team. We analyze every output for tone, timing, accuracy, and handoff moments to ensure alignment with our brand and customer experience.

Unlike configuring software, you don’t simply tell digital workers what to do; you teach them why to do it that way. By teaching them who the ideal customers are, how to talk about your solutions, what the desired outcomes are, and when it’s time to hand off to a human teammate.

Just like new employees, digital workers start small. A sales agent may handle a limited number of leads, while a People Ops agent interacts with a small pilot group before expanding to the wider organization. This gradual ramp allows managers to refine workflows, review performance, and build trust between digital and human teammates. Once validated, agents’ scope, access, and responsibilities expand in step with business needs.

Return on investment is compounded by training once, coaching weekly, and scale infinitely. Want five times the output? You don’t hire five more sales development representatives, you just turn up the dial on one.

The Outcome: Orchestrating the Workforce of the Future

AI headlines often focus on risk and failure. But we believe with the right onboarding strategy, digital labor becomes a force multiplier for human potential.

At Asymbl, we’re moving beyond thinking about how digital labor is going to change the workforce, we are orchestrating the transformation now. Every Asymbl team, from PeopleOps to Product, is now a hybrid workforce. Our digital workers are not experiments in a lab, they're teammates, driving measurable outcomes.

The result is a workforce that scales faster, adapts quicker, and learns continuously. Or as McKinsey’s latest report puts it, “The leaders of the agentic age will be those who treat AI as a collaborator, not a codebase.”

Digital labor isn’t the future of work, it’s the present. If you’re ready to move from pilots to performance, our advisors can help you chart a path to measurable ROI. 

Connect with Asymbl to learn how we guide leaders through this workforce orchestration transformation.