IN Brief:
- A Gartner survey of 509 supply chain leaders points to workforce impact expectations through 2026.
- Agentic AI adoption is accelerating across planning, logistics, and warehouse operations.
- High-performing organisations are prioritising role redesign and upskilling over blunt headcount cuts.
More than half of supply chain leaders expect advances in agentic AI to reduce the need to hire for entry-level positions, with many also anticipating broader workforce reductions as autonomous systems take on larger shares of planning and execution work.
In a Gartner survey of 509 supply chain leaders conducted globally across industries between July and October 2025, 55% said advancements in agentic AI are expected to reduce entry-level hiring needs. Another 51% said the technology will drive a shift to overall workforce reductions. At the same time, 86% agreed that adopting agentic AI will require new processes for developing future talent pipelines, pointing to a shift in how organisations build skills, manage progression, and retain operational knowledge.
The technology pressure is not limited to a single function. Gartner’s analysis found that “changes in ways of working driven by advancements in AI and agentic AI” was cited as the single most influential driver redefining supply chain strategy over the next two years. That reflects the reality that agentic systems are moving beyond analytics and recommendations into execution pathways, including exception handling, workflow orchestration, and cross-system coordination, particularly where business rules are stable and data is available at scale.
Gartner separated out respondents from high-performing organisations that exceeded expectations across measures including customer lead time, satisfaction, time to market, revenue growth, and sustainability goals over the past year. In that cohort, adoption of agentic AI was significantly higher than other respondents across procurement, production, logistics, warehouse management, and planning. Those respondents were also more likely to recognise that the traditional talent pyramid will change, as automation shifts the balance between transactional work and higher-value roles focused on governance, optimisation, and continuous improvement.
Marco Sandrone, VP analyst in Gartner’s supply chain practice, said: “The highest performing supply chain organizations are using AI to reinvent how work gets done and how talent is developed. They are not treating AI as a blunt instrument for headcount reduction.” He added: “The priority for chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) should be redesigning roles, skills, and workforce processes, so people and machines can create value together.”
Over the next two years, Gartner said high-performing leaders plan to prioritise three talent strategies: upskilling for the AI era; using AI-enabled tools to optimise workforce planning and candidate engagement; and increasing automation and advanced technologies to improve efficiency and reduce reliance on manual labour. That mix suggests a near-term squeeze at the bottom of the organisation, alongside a race to build the capability to run, control, and improve systems that increasingly act on their own.
Sandrone added that the role shift is likely to be structural rather than temporary. “Entry-level roles as understood today may fade in importance, but supply chains will still need emerging talent that is highly adaptive and innovative,” he said. “As organizations identify new ways of working through the use of AI, they will also have an advantage in identifying and attracting the kinds of talent that will sustain these new working models, including successfully reskilling current staff to take on new, higher-value roles.”
Gartner’s Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo events are scheduled for Orlando (May 4–6) and Barcelona (May 18–20), with agentic AI and workforce impacts on the agenda.
