The Business Leader's Guide to AI Employees
The workforce is changing. Here's what business leaders need to know.
AI is moving beyond individual tools and isolated automations. Organizations can now introduce AI Employees designed around defined roles, responsibilities, knowledge, tools, boundaries, and expected outcomes.
This guide will help you understand where AI Employees fit within the modern workforce and what your organization should consider before adding one to the team.
An AI Employee Has a Job to Do.
An AI Employee is an intelligent digital team member designed around a defined business role.
Like a human employee, the AI Employee should have clearly established responsibilities, access to the information and tools required to perform the role, defined boundaries, expected outcomes, and appropriate oversight.
Depending on the role, an AI Employee may be designed to research, analyze, communicate, monitor, prepare, recommend, coordinate, or execute defined work.
An automation completes a process. An AI Employee has a job.
They're Not the Same Thing.
AUTOMATION
Best suited for predictable, repeatable processes.
- When this happens, do that
- Send a notification
- Move information between systems
- Trigger a workflow
- Send a predetermined follow up
- Route a task
AI EMPLOYEE
Designed around a role and responsibilities. Depending on the role, it may:
- Evaluate information
- Research
- Analyze
- Communicate
- Make recommendations
- Use defined tools
- Complete multistep responsibilities
- Escalate situations requiring human involvement
- Adapt its actions based on context within established boundaries
Automation follows a process. An AI Employee performs responsibilities within a role.
Think Responsibilities, Not Just Tasks.
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RESEARCH
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Gather and organize relevant information from approved sources to support decision-making and operational needs.
ANALYZE
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Review information, identify patterns, compare options, and surface meaningful insights for your team.
COMMUNICATE
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Interact with customers, prospects, employees, or other appropriate audiences within defined parameters.
MONITOR
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Continuously review defined information, activity, conditions, or business indicators and surface what needs attention.
PREPARE
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Create summaries, reports, briefs, drafts, research packages, or other work products your team needs.
RECOMMEND
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Evaluate available information and suggest potential next actions for human consideration.
COORDINATE
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Help manage scheduling, information flow, follow up, and defined operational activities across systems.
EXECUTE
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Perform approved actions using connected tools and systems within established permissions and boundaries.
Every AI Employee is different. Its capabilities should be determined by the role it is designed to perform.
AI Is Becoming Part of the Organizational Chart.
HUMAN EMPLOYEE
HUMAN EMPLOYEE
AI EMPLOYEE
AI EMPLOYEE
The future workforce does not have to be human employees OR technology. Organizations can build hybrid teams where human and AI Employees work within the same operation, each contributing different strengths.
Human employees may provide leadership, relationships, empathy, creativity, judgment, accountability, and complex decision making.
AI Employees can provide additional capacity for responsibilities involving research, analysis, monitoring, communication, preparation, coordination, and defined execution.
The question is no longer simply, "What can we automate?"
The better question is, "Who or what should perform this work?"
What Could This Look Like in Practice?
AI Sales Intelligence Employee
Sales and Business Development
Potential Responsibilities
- Research potential prospects
- Gather relevant company information
- Evaluate prospects using defined criteria
- Create prospect scorecards
- Prepare information before sales conversations
- Develop call preparation briefs
- Recommend potential next actions
- Monitor defined sales opportunities
This is only one example. AI Employees can be designed for different departments, industries, responsibilities, and operational needs.
AI Employees Should Be Managed Like Members of the Workforce.
DEFINE
Determine the role, responsibilities, outcomes, boundaries, and reporting structure.
BUILD
Develop the AI Employee around the requirements of the role.
TRAIN
Provide the appropriate knowledge, instructions, processes, and business context.
TEST
Evaluate performance before deployment.
ONBOARD
Introduce the AI Employee into the operation with appropriate tools, permissions, workflows, and oversight.
MANAGE
Monitor performance, update knowledge, refine responsibilities, and maintain appropriate controls.
OFFBOARD
When the role is no longer needed, remove access, permissions, integrations, and data access appropriately.
AI Employees should have defined roles, responsible onboarding, appropriate management, and controlled offboarding.
The Goal Is Not to Replace the Human Workforce.
The strongest opportunity is often determining which responsibilities are best suited for people and which can be supported by AI.
HUMAN STRENGTHS
- Leadership
- Relationships
- Empathy
- Complex judgment
- Creativity
- Accountability
- Strategic decision making
AI STRENGTHS
- Capacity
- Speed
- Continuous monitoring
- Information processing
- Research
- Pattern identification
- Consistency
- Defined repetitive knowledge work
HYBRID WORKFORCE
Human expertise + AI capacity = a different way to design work.
Five Questions Every Business Leader Should Ask
What work actually needs to be done?
What should this AI Employee be responsible for?
What information and systems will it need?
Where should humans remain involved?
How will we know whether it's working?
Where Could an AI Employee Fit Within Your Organization?
Now that you understand what an AI Employee is, take the next step.
The AI Employee Readiness Assessment can help you evaluate your organization's capacity needs, processes, and opportunities and identify where an AI Employee may be worth exploring.
Build the Workforce Around the Work.
You don't need to begin by choosing an AI tool. Begin with the work that needs to be done.
112SV Group helps organizations determine where AI belongs, define the role, build the AI Employee, and integrate it responsibly into the operation.
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