ServiceNow has announced a new set of capabilities for EmployeeWorks, introducing a third-generation employee-centric AI framework designed to help workers create AI agents, automate routine tasks, and access enterprise systems more efficiently. The announcement also includes ToolSmith, an agentic development environment intended to simplify the creation of enterprise-ready AI tools.

The updates focus on making AI more accessible to employees while maintaining organizational controls, security, and governance. By allowing workers to configure assistants around their specific responsibilities, ServiceNow aims to reduce reliance on lengthy development cycles and disconnected business applications.

EmployeeWorks Brings Governed AI Agent Creation to Employees

The latest EmployeeWorks capabilities are built around an AI framework that combines contextual understanding, reasoning, memory, and access to enterprise workflows. The platform is designed to help employees carry out tasks across business applications while operating within administrator-defined permissions and safeguards.

Organizations are increasingly investing in AI, but employees can still face barriers when attempting to automate their own work. Development backlogs, fragmented tools, and integration challenges can make it difficult to translate everyday business needs into practical AI solutions.

EmployeeWorks aims to address these challenges by enabling employees to describe what they need in natural language and configure AI agents without requiring traditional coding skills. Administrators can establish boundaries for how these agents behave, which tools they access, and what information they can use.

Productivity Assistants Support Role-Specific Tasks

ServiceNow is introducing Productivity Assistants to support work that requires contextual understanding and coordination across systems. Employees can customize assistants to suit their responsibilities, while organizations can also deploy preconfigured options.

The initial capabilities include assistants designed for HR service delivery and general workplace productivity.

HR-focused assistants are intended to help managers and HR teams handle employee requests, approvals, talent-related questions, and people-management activities. The available solutions include:

• Talent Insights Assistant: Provides managers with candidate-fit information, recruitment insights, and organizational talent intelligence through integrations with Findem and Phenom.

• HR Business Partner Assistant: Supports HR-related requests, case management, approvals, and employee programs through a conversational interface.

• Manager Assistant: Helps managers access coaching resources, team insights, and performance-related information.

EmployeeWorks also includes two foundational assistants for broader workplace needs.

The Research Assistant can investigate complex questions using authorized internal and external information sources, then organize its findings into useful outputs such as documents or presentations.

The Calendaring Assistant helps coordinate schedules, resolve calendar conflicts, arrange meeting spaces, and manage conferencing details. It is designed to handle more complex scheduling requests than simple meeting-booking tools, including finding suitable times for team-wide meetings and workshops.

Productivity Routines Automate Repeatable Work

For recurring activities, EmployeeWorks introduces Productivity Routines, which allow employees to create AI-powered processes that run proactively in the background.

Users describe the outcome they want, select the relevant tools, and configure a routine without needing to understand the underlying APIs or data structures. Once deployed, the routine can execute predefined steps and deliver results with less manual involvement.

For example, a sales manager could create a prospecting routine that identifies upcoming account meetings, gathers relevant information from approved sources, and prepares a tailored sales brief before the meeting begins.

These automated processes could help reduce repetitive administrative work and give employees more time for activities requiring judgment, collaboration, and customer engagement. Enterprise controls remain important, particularly when routines access business information or initiate actions across multiple systems.

ToolSmith Aims to Accelerate Enterprise AI Development

ServiceNow also introduced ToolSmith, an agentic development environment intended to help developers build tools for EmployeeWorks AI assistants using natural-language instructions.

According to the company, ToolSmith is trained on more than 75,000 APIs. Developers can describe the intended functionality, review a proposed implementation plan, and use the environment to create integrations and tools designed for reliability and efficient AI execution.

The system can also help investigate failures by examining relevant logs and suggesting fixes. In addition, it can analyze usage patterns to identify opportunities for improving existing workflows or developing new ones.

By bringing planning, implementation, testing, and troubleshooting into a conversational development experience, ToolSmith is intended to shorten the time required to create and maintain enterprise AI integrations.

Conversations API Extends EmployeeWorks Across Applications

The new Conversations API enables organizations to integrate EmployeeWorks capabilities into applications and channels their employees already use. These may include internal business applications, kiosks, and other AI-enabled experiences.

The integration approach is intended to make Productivity Assistants and Productivity Routines accessible beyond a single interface, reducing the need for employees to move between separate systems to complete their work.

For organizations with established application environments, this could offer a way to introduce conversational AI capabilities without rebuilding their existing systems from the ground up.

Customers Report Improvements in Employee Productivity

ServiceNow also highlighted customer experiences that illustrate how conversational workflows can change internal service delivery.

The Salvation Army Australia reported that its AI specialist, known as “Goldie,” resolves nine out of ten questions without escalation and has returned more than 5,000 hours to its workforce, according to the organization.

INRY, a Cprime company, said its conversational employee portal reduced internal request submission times by 60% and achieved a 97% completion rate. The company attributed these results to simplifying how employees submit and complete requests without switching between applications.

These examples demonstrate the potential benefits of conversational employee services, although results will depend on each organization's processes, integrations, and implementation.

Governance Remains Central to Enterprise AI Adoption

As AI agents become more capable of interacting with enterprise systems, organizations must ensure that automation remains secure, auditable, and aligned with employee access rights. Administrative guardrails, appropriate data permissions, and oversight of automated actions will be essential to deploying these tools responsibly.

ServiceNow's latest EmployeeWorks developments bring employee-facing assistants, proactive routines, and AI tool development into a more connected environment. The company's approach aims to help employees create practical AI solutions while giving organizations a governed foundation for scaling automation across business functions.