The 3 Workforce Disruption Waves You Can’t Afford to Ignore
From AI-human collaboration to rising complexity in frontline roles, the next era of work demands new strategies. Discover the three disruption waves reshaping our organizations, and how you can turn this shift into an advantage.
This article was originally published as part of Centrical CEO and founder Gal Rimon’s “The Future of Work” newsletter. For more insights on CX, EX, and industry thought leadership, subscribe today and follow Gal on LinkedIn.
Preparing the Frontline for the Next Era
We’ve known this for some time: the ground beneath the workforce is shifting fast, and legacy workforce management strategies are falling behind in a world AI is rapidly reshaping.
At the heart of this transformation are three powerful waves, each reshaping how we think about people, performance, and potential:
The rise of the AI-human hybrid workforce
Growing complexity in frontline roles
The workforce readiness gap
To stay ahead, we need to rethink not just what work gets done, but how, by whom, and how fast we can adapt.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these waves and explore how they are reshaping the future of work.
1. The Rise of the AI-Human Hybrid Workforce
A new class of workers—autonomous AI agents—has entered the chat.
Agentic AI is rapidly becoming embedded across all processes and functions, shaping a future in which humans and AI will work together to achieve shared goals. This new reality comes with several new challenges:
Work orchestration complexity increases: Leaders must orchestrate workflows that assign tasks intelligently between AI and human workers, based on context, complexity, and desired outcomes.
Redefined roles and responsibilities — and new ways of measuring performance, as we’ll see in the next section.
New managerial skills: Managers will need to supervise and coach both human and digital labor, and use new tools to surface performance gaps, suggest interventions, and align teams. Tuning digital labor requires different skills from coaching human labor.
Understanding the human advantage: One of the most strategic and consequential questions leaders now face is where AI adds value by augmenting human work, and where human experience, empathy, and judgment are most effective.
2. No Longer Just a Job: Frontline Employees as Talent
We know it: all roles, including frontline roles, are rapidly evolving. As AI automates more processes and handles simpler customer requests, employees are expected to solve more complex or nuanced issues and deliver human experiences that AI can’t replicate.
The ongoing shift is redefining what it means to be a frontline worker: not a script-follower, but a trusted expert who combines emotional intelligence, deep knowledge of products, processes, and policies, and real-time judgment.
As expectations change, organizations must actively invest in helping their employees upskill and reskill to meet these new demands. This shift requires a new kind of mindset: beyond hiring for hard skills, you’re looking for critical thinkers and empathetic communicators who can work in tandem with AI.
We’re seeing these changes take place in various industries already.
In financial services, reps are now expected to become trusted advisors to their clients, helping them with end-of-life planning beyond just savings and retirement plans.
In telco, complexity is rising. Reps can’t just know the script; they need to understand the product, the customer, the tech, the context—everything.
How can leaders support their employees as they transition into more complex roles?
➡️ Equip agents with the tools they need to handle complexity.
➡️ Deliver on-the-job upskilling and reskilling through microlearning and coaching.
➡️ Motivate growth through gamified experiences and performance-based incentives.
3. The Workforce Readiness Gap
As AI accelerates job disruption, most organizations lack the infrastructure to reskill and redeploy talent fast enough. Traditional career pathing has become obsolete, and we need a more agile model of on-the-job upskilling, reskilling, and internal mobility.
The workforce readiness gap is a growing disconnect between the capabilities organizations need and what their teams are currently equipped to deliver.
We can’t “hire” our way out of the skills gap: we need to build skills from within our organizations. To close the gap, we need to provide our employees with opportunities to grow continuously, both on the job and through ongoing training.
I’ve written about it in this article about on-the-job upskilling. I use this Sankey diagram to illustrate how upskilling and reskilling can help retain your current frontline workforce.
“By prioritizing on-the-job upskilling and reskilling, leaders can retain a portion of employees who might have otherwise left or been let go of, transforming potential attrition into opportunities for growth and internal mobility.
Replacing frontline employees can be very costly. By taking a closer look at your workforce data, you can easily quantify the financial impact of turnover and, more importantly, how much money you can save by prioritizing talent retention.”
AI can greatly help with the following:
→ Identify individual skills gaps and deliver targeted knowledge refreshers.
→ Build personalized, data-driven learning experiences at scale.
→ Generate bite-sized, microlearning content.
→ Gamify learning to boost engagement and retention.
→ Deliver personalized performance nudges.
Embracing AI-powered, on-the-job upskilling and reskilling is essential if you want to build a resilient, future-ready workforce.
In Conclusion: Turning Disruption Into Advantage
Each of these 3 waves—hybrid labor, role complexity, and readiness—brings real challenges. But within that disruption lies a key opportunity: the chance to build a more aligned, empowered, and future-ready workforce.
Disruption doesn’t have to derail progress. When embraced strategically, today’s workforce shifts can be a catalyst for elevating people, reimagining performance, and unlocking untapped potential on the front lines.
Did you find this article helpful? Share The Future of Work newsletter with a colleague!
See Centrical in Action - Level up frontline team performance with gamification
Let's stay in touch
Prepare your employees to deliver success! Get tips and insights in your inbox a few times a month.
We'll never share your email address and you can opt out at any time, we promise.
Request a Free Demo
Madeleine Freind
VP, Customer Success
Madeleine Freind is a senior Customer Success leader with deep experience building and scaling SaaS and managed services businesses. At Centrical, she leads the Customer Success teams across North and South America, partnering with clients to drive measurable business impact through the platform.
Before joining Centrical, Madeleine was Head of Customer Success at Quantifind, an AI-powered analytics company, where she led strategic relationships with brands like Hershey’s, KFC, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Dunkin’ Brands. Her ability to translate complex data into clear, actionable solutions consistently helped customers achieve their goals.
Earlier in her career, Madeleine spent over a decade on the agency side, managing CRM and digital marketing programs for Fortune 500 companies through smart, data-driven strategies.
Michael Ciancio
CMO
Michael Ciancio serves as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Centrical, bringing decades of experience in marketing and go-to-market strategy. In this role, he leads the company’s global marketing efforts to drive brand growth and market expansion.
Prior to joining Centrical, Michael held marketing leadership positions at notable technology companies, including IntelePeer, Infor, and Vonage. Throughout his career, he has successfully guided teams in scaling products, strengthening brands, and significantly expanding market presence.
Michael’s expertise lies in scaling high-growth software companies, particularly in AI, performance management, and employee engagement solutions for customer experience teams. His strategic vision and leadership continue to be instrumental in advancing Centrical’s mission to transform how organizations engage and motivate their frontline teams.
Michael holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Gettysburg College and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing from Montclair State University.
Natalie Roth VP, Corporate Marketing
Natalie Roth brings over 15 years of experience in brand and product marketing for SaaS solutions. Before joining Centrical, she was Senior Product Marketing Manager at Frontline Education, where she led go-to-market strategies for enterprise K-12 solutions and played a key role in integrating and positioning products following multiple acquisitions.
Previously, Natalie served as Director of Marketing at Accelify Solutions, where she drove marketing strategy, new product launches, and customer communications. She played a pivotal role in business growth, expanding market presence, and deepening client engagement, contributing to the company’s success and eventual acquisition by Frontline Education.
Natalie holds a BA in Creative Writing and Digital Media from New York University, graduating magna cum laude.
Linat Mart
VP, Product Management
Linat Polak Mart has more than 15 years of expertise in managing product strategy and operations in high-volume organizations.Previously, she held the role of Head of Product Experience and Communications for LivePerson, a leading Conversational AI platform, where she played crucial part in delivering significant product innovation and customer growth. Prior to her time at LivePerson, she held multiple senior product roles at NICE, a leading enterprise customer experience (CX) software provider, including Director of Product Portfolio and Director of Product Management.
Linat holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Computer Science from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). She graduated magna cum laude from both institutions.
“CX leaders should stop isolating contact centers from other departments. Customer experience is increasingly cross-functional. In 2025, integrating CX insights across the organization will be critical to delivering seamless and cohesive experiences.”
Tompkins comes to Centrical with more than 25 years of experience in software and hardware sales. Prior to joining his role as Chief Revenue Officer at Centrical, he was CEO at Workspot. He held the position of Chief Revenue Officer at IGEL as well as senior sales leadership positions with Red Hat, Hewlett Packard (now Hewlett Packard Enterprise), and Citrix.
Tompkins holds an MBA in Business Administration and Management from the University of Virginia, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration and served in the US Navy as a Nuclear Propulsion Technician.
“To start, give customers a choice: digital or live support. And if they go digital first and can’t get what they want, make it super-easy for them to connect to a live agent.”
“Knowledge Management: It is not exactly underrated but it will be bigger than what it is in 2025. Vendors are likely to boost R&D investment in knowledge management for contact centers in 2025.”
“Human-centered AI, where AI is used not just to automate and drop money to the bottom line, but used to service up insights to support team members and delight customers. I see generative AI with conversational context and tonal analysis as pretty critical here.”
“The future? Goodness, there’s so much, but I really believe 2025 is the year of community. We’re not just taking tickets anymore—folks we’re drawing people in, getting proactive, and co-creating with customers. Community will become a normal service channel, with customer service workers facilitating and adding value.”
“The myth that technology/AI is a quickly implemented CX superpower. Companies will realize that we can’t harness a lot of these gains without quality data that is clean and well-organized.”
“By 2025 the buzzword omnichannel may be on its’ last leg. Customers want their issues resolved quickly and accurately and they would prefer not to need to contact us in multiple channels that we can see at one time.”
“For 2025, the main trend I’m watching is ‘AI agents’—bots powered by AI that are becoming more autonomous. Unlike basic responses, these AI agents can handle end-to-end customer interactions, reducing the need for human intervention. Expect significant developments from vendors.”
“Stop talking about AI. It’s like talking about the internet being a thing. It’s here. The better focus is start thinking about how AI enhances the lives of your team. So stop talking about AI and start doing something about it.”
“AI and CX will drive hyper-personalization, using consumer data to segment customers, deliver key messages, and provide fast, accurate responses. Technologies like chatbots and predictive analytics will close the gap between brands and consumers.”
“The blending of CX and EX will accelerate. The days of reducing friction for customers at the expense of employees are over. Indeed, because AI-enabled customer experiences often require AI usage by customer-facing employees, leaders will have to ensure a frictionless work experience to drive AI adoption and deliver value.”
One myth that will be debunked in 2025?: “Customers are on the edge of their seat waiting to hear what you have to say. We need to learn about what’s important to customers by asking more questions.”
Doron is a seasoned R&D professional with a a deep expertise in SaaS and enterprise software. He leads product development at Centrical. Prior to joining the company, he was Director of R&D at Tipalti, where he was part of the team that designed and developed the Tiplati product and the infrastructure it uses. Prior to that he was Director of R&D Sensor Management, which joined from Orsus, which was acquired by Nice Systems. Prior to that he held various R&D positions at Orsus. Doron holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from the Tel Aviv Yafo Academic College and a MBA degree from the University of Tel Aviv.
Gal Rimon
Founder and CEO
Gal founded Centrical (previously GamEffective) in 2013, with the vision of helping companies empower their employees’ performance, making them the center of business success.Prior to that he was CEO of Gilon-Synergy Business Insight, a national leader in Business Intelligence. In 2010, Gilon-Synergy was acquired by Ness Technologies (NASDAQ:NSTC) and Gal went on to serve as Senior VP at Ness, and was member of its executive management.
Prior to that he was VP customer relations and operations at Deloitte Consulting. He also worked at EDS and Bashan. He holds a MBA degree in Marketing and Information Technologies from the Tel Aviv University.
Daphne Saragosti
Chief Customer Officer
Daphne has over 15 years of experience in Customer Relations and Retention in both B2B and B2C environments. Her area of expertise is leading customer success, consulting and global professional services teams within public and private sector companies. She is focused on leading teams to grow the partnership with our clients.
Prior to Centrical, Daphne worked software and service companies in the online marketing and gaming industry.
Daphne holds MA in Statistics – Specialization in Operations Research and a MBA degree, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ella Davidson
VP Global HR
Ella Davidson is responsible for managing Centrical’s employee relations worldwide, including organizational development, talent management, benefits and recruitment. Ella has more than 18 years of human resources management experience. Prior to joining Centrical she was vice president of human resources at myThings and OpTier – leading SW companies, and consulted numerous entrepreneurs and startups in the Israeli hi-tech industry and Israel and in the US.Ella holds a B.A in Psychology from the Hebrew University and MSc in Organizational Behavior from Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University.
Ariel Herman
VP Research and Development
Ariel has over 16 years’ experience in a wide variety of R&D leadership roles. He is highly experienced at building R&D teams from the ground up, driving high levels of accountability and ownership and setting up automation infrastructures. For the past 10 years Ariel has managed both in-house and offshore development teams at companies ranging from startups to enterprise organizations.
Prior to joining Centrical, Ariel served as VP of R&D at Worthy.com where his team dramatically improved product stability, quality and execution. Before that, he was VP R&D at Applicaster where he led infrastructure changes from project to product. Ariel has also held various R&D positions at Retalix (later acquired by NCR).
Ariel holds B.sc in Computer science & Math, and MBA degree in Information Technologies, both from Bar Ilan University
Ronen Botzer
CFO
Ronen is a Finance and Business Development executive with 20+ years of leadership experience in startups and global companies across all aspects of management. He has direct experience with companies in the areas of software, services and capital equipment, including fund raising as well as M&As across different continents. Ronen is a CPA and holds an LLM degree from Bar Ilan university and B.A in business administration from the College of Business Management.
See a Preview
Employee Performance Experience Bundle
Get access to these Employee Performance Experience assets: ePX Definitive Guide, Cheat Sheet, and Engagement Index. All delivered to your Inbox.
Onboarding One-Pager
Transform Onboarding with the AI Copilot Built for Frontline Teams
Quality Management One-Pager
Find out how you can deliver better customer experiences in this one-pager
Performance Management One-Pager
Learn what’s possible with Centrical’s Performance Management Platform
Coaching One-Pager
Learn how you can leverage Centrical’s Coaching capabilities to scale frontline manager impact.
Voice of Employee One-Pager
Learn how you can keep your frontline emotionally connected, motivated, and productive, wherever they work.
Gamification One-Pager
Learn all about Gamification and how you can benefit from it to proactively engage your frontline, from anywhere.
Engage and motivate your frontline teams
Improve performance with an AI-powered digital coach
Deliver world class CX with dynamic, actionable quality evaluations
Boost performance with personalized, actionable goals
Nurture employee success with the power of AI
Listen and respond to your frontline, continuously
Drive productivity with performance-driven learning that sticks
Drive agent efficiency, deliver client results
Keep tech teams motivated and proficient on products and services while exceeding targets
Maintain compliance while building customer happiness and loyalty
Enlighten energy teams to boost engagement
Engage, develop, and retain your agents while driving better CX
Improve the employee experience for your reservations and service desk agents
Madeleine Freind
Natalie Roth
Linat Mart
Doron Neumann
Gal Rimon
Daphne Saragosti
Ella Davidson
Ariel Herman
Ronen Botzer