Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 report reveals the “Frontier Firms” is born, a new organization blueprint is emerging
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Microsoft has released the latest edition of the Work Trend Index report. The 2025 edition highlights how organizations in Thailand and around the world are transforming with an eye on becoming “Frontier Firms”. These businesses are operating at the forefront of innovation with AI and drawing from enhanced capabilities of hybrid teams – where human employees led, AI Agent operated automate processes as their digital teammates.
The 2025 Work Trend Index study draws on survey data that covers 31,000 employees and executives across 31 territories worldwide, global job market data from LinkedIn, and usage data from Microsoft 365 business subscriptions. New to this year’s report are additional input and analyses from AI-focused startups, economists, and researchers.
Dhanawat Suthumpun, Managing Director of Microsoft Thailand, said: “This year’s report shows how Thai executives are highly engaged with the transformation of their organization’s core strategy – with 93% of Thai leaders believing they have to rethink core strategies and operations in this pivotal year. Looking at the big picture globally, we can also see leading organizations changing the structure behind their work. AI is being elevated from a command-based tools to a new teammate for employees, who are now encouraged to work seamlessly with both their human and AI agent colleagues. These organizations are raising the bar for innovation and becoming ‘Frontier Firms’ with higher growth prospects than the competition.”
Key findings from the 2025 Work Trend Index report include:
1. Organizations can buy intelligence on tap
Intelligence has long been an invaluable resource for organizations – limited only by constraints like working hours or physical and mental energy. With the rise of AI, Frontier Firms now recognize that the presence of AI tools and automated, agent-driven systems can contribute intelligence at a significant level to help the organization grow with speed and agility.
The study reveals that 90% of Thai business leaders (global average: 82%) are confidence they will use AI agents as digital team members alongside employees to expand capacity within the next 12-18 months. Since AI agents are capable of understanding, analyzing, planning, or even automatically executing some work by themselves – under human supervision or “agent boss” in crucial stages – it can be said that these leaders are planning for growth through AI-powered digital teammates.
This change in team structure will help companies acquire new capabilities and overcome limitations when it comes to increasing productivity – a challenge that organizations everywhere have long faced. 75% of Thai leaders (global average: 53%) say they want their businesses to be even more productive. However, 88% of Thai employees (global average: 80%) feel they do not have the time or energy to handle the overwhelming amount of work they face.
2. New structures emerge as employees team up with AI
68% of Thai leaders (global average: 46%) said their organizations had already begun implementing AI agents to fully automate certain business processes – the highest rate across all 31 territories surveyed. Globally, organizations are moving towards hybrid teams with human and AI members working together, and the shift is especially clear to see in fields such as customer service, marketing, and product development.
When asked why they turn to AI for help at work, Thai employees showed a slightly different perspective compared to their global counterparts. While the primary reason worldwide is AI’s 24/7 availability, Thai employees value creative input from AI far higher than the global average. On the flip side, workers elsewhere prioritize the speed and quality of AI output slightly higher than creativity.
The higher rate of AI agent adoption in Thailand is also reflected in how employees see AI. 56% of Thai employees view AI as a thought partner, while 43% see AI as a tool to be commanded (global averages: 46% and 52%).
3. Any employee can become a boss with AI agents
All the data points discussed so far indicate that the use of AI agents in organizations will continue to grow. Within the next 5 years, Thai leaders believe their teams’ scope of work will include these tasks:
- Redesigning business processes with AI (51%)
- Building multi-agent systems to automate complex tasks (51%)
- Training AI agents (56%)
- Managing AI agents (46%)
Before we reach that point, organizations must recognize how employees still require skilling support. Leaders in Thailand (78%) and around the world (67%) are more familiar with the concept and usage of AI agents than employees (53% among Thais, 40% global average). However, most organizations appear to be aware of this gap, and upskilling employees is the number one priority for organizations worldwide in the next 12-18 months.
New capabilities coming to Microsoft 365 Copilot unlock possibilities for the era of AI agents
Together with the Work Trend Index report, Microsoft has announced new features for Microsoft 365 Copilot that make it even easier for organizations around the world to harness the capabilities of AI agents and more advanced AI models.
- Researcher and Analyst agents powered by OpenAI’s deep reasoning models are rolling out to customers through the Frontier program — and with our new Agent Store, you can easily find, pin and use agents — from partners like Jira, Monday.com and Miro — or your own custom agents.
- Create brings OpenAI’s GPT-4o AI image generator to work, unlocking design and content creation skills for everyone. Easily modify or customize brand images or generate AI images aligned to your company’s approved brand guidelines and create everything from marketing copy and social assets to newsletter banners, videos and more.
- Copilot Notebooks transforms your notes, documents and data into immediate insights and actions. By grounding Copilot in a notebook containing specific chats, files, meeting recordings and more, it can focus on the most relevant information — all while constantly scanning your source material to update in real time as your data evolves. Notebooks can even create an audio overview of your content with two hosts that walk you through the key points — a fun, flexible way to stay informed.
- Copilot Search is a new AI-powered enterprise search that helps you find what you need instantly with rich, context-aware answers from across your organization’s apps and data. It connects to first- and third-party apps — from ServiceNow to Google Drive, Slack, Confluence, Jira and more — so you get fast, relevant results at work no matter where your data lives.
- New capabilities in the Copilot Control System empower IT pros to enable, disable or block agents for specific users or groups — to help ensure the right agents are being used by the right people.
“Our latest Work Trend Index study underlines how organizations worldwide are taking their next steps forward – from experimenting with AI to genuinely using AI and finally to restructuring how they work alongside AI,” added Dhanawat. “We believe that organizations and nations that shift to an AI-first approach can seamlessly blend the capabilities of humans and AI and unlock new opportunities to grow and succeed. At Microsoft, we stand ready to support and empower every organization on this journey with cutting-edge technologies and best practices in the era of AI.” For more information on the Work Trend Index 2025 study as well as access to the full report, click here. Find out more about new capabilities coming to Microsoft 365 Copilot for businesses here.