Seven Risks to Examine When Work Changes With AI

Which learning opportunities disappear when an agent takes over routine work?

Preparing a first draft or checking source records can help a junior understand the business. If an agent takes over those activities, decide how the person will learn to recognize missing evidence, challenge a result and handle an exception. The effect depends on the responsibilities and supervision in that team.

What it means for you: Keep supervised practice in the redesigned role. For example, ask a junior to investigate a deliberately incomplete invoice record and explain the escalation to an experienced reviewer.

Can the team still investigate when the agent is wrong?

A fluent answer or a clean dashboard can make checking feel unnecessary. Identify the decisions where a missed error matters. People may need access to original records, tool logs and a fallback process to investigate the output rather than simply accept it.

What it means for you: Practise with incorrect or incomplete outputs. Check whether reviewers find the problem, explain their reasoning and take the appropriate next step.

Ask people what the redesigned role asks them to carry.

Changing a role can remove work people value or concentrate difficult decisions in fewer hands. Talk with the people affected about workload, discretion and the responsibilities they want to develop. A task map alone cannot tell you how a change will affect their experience or employment.

What it means for you: Review the proposed role with its manager and participants. Track workload and unresolved cases during a bounded rollout alongside output and quality measures.

Where does the work go after the agent finishes?

Faster drafting may move the delay to review or approval. Trace the connected workflow before choosing the change: inputs, dependencies, checks and the owner of each handoff. Some activities can run in parallel; others depend on evidence or approval from an earlier step.

What it means for you: Compare end-to-end completion time, rework and review effort with the existing process. Agree the measures before treating a faster individual step as a business improvement.

The reviewer needs enough context to make the next decision.

An invoice exception needs more than a warning. The reviewer needs the invoice, the matching order and receipt, the rule that failed and the decision requested. Define who receives the case, what happens if nobody responds and what the system is allowed to do while it waits.

What it means for you: Test missing documents, conflicting records and unanswered escalations. Preserve the decision and its reason in the audit trail. Any change to the agent’s rules or behavior needs an agreed review process.

Who owns the decisions between teams?

Managers may take on new work as agents handle drafting, routing or monitoring. Make responsibility for exceptions, approvals, performance review and staff development explicit. A proposed task split does not determine staffing levels or show that a management role is redundant.

What it means for you: Review cross-team cases with the accountable managers. Agree decision authority, escalation paths and the preparation each owner needs before changing the operating model.

Connect technical practice to the work someone will build or review.

Agent building, workflow configuration and model evaluation become useful in an enterprise project with relevant records, rules and decisions. Start with the responsibility the person will take on, then identify the technical and domain capabilities they need to demonstrate.

What it means for you: Shape the project and assessment around the person’s starting capability and the actual workflow. Check agent behavior separately from the person’s assessment and the operating owner’s acceptance.