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You Cannot Orchestrate a Workforce You Cannot Build

Brandon Metcalf

January 7, 2026

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You Cannot Orchestrate a Workforce You Cannot Build

In December, I spoke with Revenue Brew about what AI means for the future of sales teams. My answer surprised some people: sales will remain one of the best career-starting jobs because despite the infusion of AI, it is ultimately mastered through humans. It is about human connection. It is about human relationships. It is about the ability to problem solve.

That statement applies far beyond sales. It applies to every function where digital workers are being deployed. The technology works. The architecture is sound. But the humans who manage digital teammates are going to become harder to find, not easier.

The Talent Paradox

AI can deliver on its promise. It can automate repetitive work, let smaller teams do more with less, and scale capacity without adding headcount. But only if you orchestrate it correctly.

And orchestrating it correctly changes the nature of human work. The humans in your organization are now managing and collaborating with digital teammates alongside their existing responsibilities. That requires a deeper understanding of the job itself: what outcome needs to be achieved and the motivation behind it. You cannot direct a digital worker if you do not understand the why behind the work.

This changes what you need from your people. It is not enough to know how to do a job. You need people who understand why the job exists, what success looks like, and how to translate that into direction for a digital teammate. These are not technical skills. They are human skills applied to a new category of work.

In September of last year, I told Revenue Brew that keeping our internal team up to speed was our biggest challenge. That has not changed. We have deployed more than 95 digital workers at Asymbl. We have a chief digital labor officer. We are driving toward a goal to have 30% of output per person delivered by their digital teammate in 2026. And still, the limiting factor is not the technology. It is finding and developing the humans who can operate effectively in a hybrid workforce.

This is the talent paradox at the center of AI transformation. We are in the early days of companies adopting workforce orchestration. But as more organizations deploy digital workers, the demand for humans who can work alongside them will increase. Not just humans who can manage digital teammates, but humans who deeply understand the outcomes their role exists to achieve. The companies that build this capability now will have an advantage. The ones that wait will be competing for the same talent pool as everyone else.

What These Humans Actually Do

When we onboarded Theodore, our Agentforce SDR Agent, we did not just deploy a tool and walk away. We assigned a human to manage it. Mitch Canaday, our BDR at the time, met with Theodore weekly. He collaborated with it the way he would any other coworker. He fed Theodore information, updated messaging, and coached it to perform better over time.

As Mitch told Revenue Brew: "It's like AI 101. I get the opportunity to have hands-on experience with this, and experience being able to create it, build it, feed it information, just have a really strong foundational understanding of how it works."

That experience made Mitch more valuable, not less. He was promoted. And we had to find a new SDR who could do what Mitch did: understand the outcomes the role exists to achieve and translate that into direction for a digital teammate, while still building human relationships with prospects.

This is the pattern we see across every function. The humans who thrive in a hybrid workforce are not the ones who resist digital workers. They are the ones who learn to work alongside them. They provide context, exercise judgment, catch errors, and handle the work that requires trust. They become the strategic layer while digital workers handle execution.

The problem is that these humans are not easy to find. They require a combination of adaptability, deep understanding of outcomes, and comfort with ambiguity that most hiring processes are not designed to identify.

Reskilling Is Not Enough

Some companies assume they can solve this through training. Upskill your existing team. Teach them to manage digital workers. Problem solved.

It helps, but it is not enough.

Reskilling takes time. It requires investment. And it assumes your current team has the capacity to learn new skills while still doing their jobs. For many organizations, that capacity does not exist. Recruiters are already burning out. Sales teams are stretched thin. Operations leaders are managing more with less.

Meanwhile, as more companies adopt workforce orchestration, the talent you need to hire, the people who can step into a hybrid workforce and perform immediately, will be pursued by every company making the same transition. The reskilling you invest in makes your people more competitive in the market. Some will stay. Some will leave for better offers. Either way, you will be competing for talent in a market where demand is growing.

This is why workforce orchestration cannot be separated from talent strategy. You cannot deploy digital workers at scale if you do not have the humans who understand outcomes deeply enough to direct them. And you cannot attract those humans if you do not have the systems to find them.

Two Sides of the Same Strategy

At Asymbl, we see workforce orchestration as two connected problems.

The first is digital labor: how do you deploy digital workers effectively? What roles should they fill? How do you measure their performance? How do you ensure they work reliably alongside human teammates? This is what our Digital Labor Advisory practice addresses.

The second is human talent: how do you find the people who can thrive in a hybrid workforce? How do you identify candidates who understand outcomes deeply and can translate that into direction for digital teammates? How do you move faster than your competitors to secure that talent? This is what our Recruiter Suite addresses.

These are not separate initiatives. They are one workforce strategy.

The companies that treat digital labor as an IT project and recruiting as an HR project will struggle to connect them. They will deploy digital workers without the humans to manage them. They will hire humans without the systems to make them productive. The gap between the two will widen.

The companies that treat both as workforce orchestration will build hybrid teams that compound. Digital workers handle volume. Human workers handle judgment. Recruitment technology finds the right humans faster. Digital labor strategy deploys digital workers into the right roles. The system reinforces itself.

Building the Workforce You Need

We have been operating this way at Asymbl since we launched. We built Recruiter Suite because we needed technology to find human workers at scale. We built our Digital Labor Advisory practice because we needed a discipline for deploying digital workers effectively. We use both in our own business every day.

In 2025, we hired 100 people in 100 days with just two human recruiters. Our Recruiter Agent assisted with handling the volume: reviewing applications, pre-screening candidates, scheduling interviews. Our human recruiters handled the judgment: building relationships, assessing fit, closing offers. The combination worked because we had both pieces in place.

The same principle applies to every organization making this transition. You need the technology to find human talent. You need the strategy to deploy digital workers. And you need both working together as one system.

Workforce orchestration starts with hiring. If you cannot build the team, you cannot orchestrate it.

Ready to build a workforce that combines human talent and digital labor? Asymbl's Recruiter Suite helps you find the humans who can thrive in a hybrid workforce. Our Digital Labor Advisory practice helps you deploy digital workers into the right roles. Connect with our team to discuss how both can work together for your organization.

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