The first staffing decision is no longer simply who to hire. It is whether the work should be handled by a person, an AI Employee, or both.
A recent newsletter from my friend J. Massey called "The $59.76 Employee" made me stop and think.
J. documented the work an AI Employee completed inside his business in a single day.
His results belong to his business. But his article raised a question that every business owner should now consider:
Before I hire another employee, contractor, or freelancer, could an AI Employee handle all or part of this work?
Six months ago, I was using AI to research, write, organize ideas, and answer questions.
Today, I am building AI Employees inside my own company and helping other companies determine where AI belongs in theirs.
The biggest change was not discovering another tool.
It was learning to examine the work before deciding who, or what, should perform it.
The Traditional Answer Is to Hire Someone
When work begins piling up, the traditional response is to hire help.
A business owner may hire an employee, find a contractor, or send the work to a freelancer.
Sometimes that is still the correct decision.
Work involving relationships, judgment, creativity, licensing, sensitive decisions, or direct accountability may require an experienced person.
But many companies also hire people to perform work that is highly repetitive:
- Moving information between systems
- Preparing recurring reports
- Monitoring inboxes or requests
- Researching prospects
- Organizing documents
- Drafting routine follow-ups
- Checking whether commitments were completed
- Re-entering the same information in multiple places
Before purchasing more human hours, business owners now have another option to evaluate.
Could an AI Employee handle the repetitive portion of the responsibility while a person retains control of the decisions that matter?
Using AI Is Not the Same as Having an AI Strategy
A company can subscribe to several AI tools and still have no clear AI strategy.
The tools may help employees write faster or find information, but the company may not know:
- Which business problems AI should address
- Which workflows are ready for automation
- Who owns the final result
- What information the AI may access
- Which actions require human approval
- How success will be measured
An AI strategy begins with the business, not the technology.
It asks:
- Where is time being lost?
- Which responsibilities repeat every week?
- Where do follow-ups or handoffs break?
- What work depends too heavily on one person's memory?
- Which steps follow a predictable pattern?
- Which decisions must remain with a person?
Only after answering those questions should a company decide whether the work belongs to a person, an AI Employee, or a combination of both.
The Catch: AI Cannot Automate Confusion
Most business owners do not begin with a technology problem.
They begin with a process problem.
Important work may live inside someone's head. Different people may complete the same task differently. Follow-ups happen when someone remembers them. Information moves manually between email, spreadsheets, calendars, and other systems.
Adding AI to that environment does not automatically solve the problem.
It can make the confusion move faster.
Before a workflow can be improved or automated, the company must understand how the work should happen.
That means documenting the process, identifying the decision points, defining the exceptions, and deciding where human approval belongs.
AI does not eliminate the need for a clear process.
It makes clarity even more important.
What an AI Employee Actually Is
An AI Employee is not simply a chatbot with a job title.
It is a defined role built around a specific, repeatable responsibility.
That role needs:
- A clear purpose
- Defined responsibilities
- Access to approved information and tools
- Boundaries around what it can and cannot do
- A process for handling exceptions
- A measurable result
- Human review before external action
The AI may research, organize, monitor, prepare, or complete approved steps.
People continue to own judgment, relationships, sensitive decisions, and final accountability.
That is how I am approaching AI inside imed+KT Group.
Instead of building one general assistant expected to do everything, I am developing focused AI Employees around clearly defined business responsibilities.
Each role begins with the work, not the software.
How We Help Companies Make the Decision
imed+KT Group helps owner-led companies determine where AI belongs in their business and implement a practical AI strategy.
We do not begin by recommending a collection of tools.
We begin by examining the work.
We look for repetitive responsibilities, delayed follow-ups, dropped handoffs, recurring reports, repeated data entry, and processes that depend too heavily on one person.
Then we help the company:
- Identify one valuable workflow to improve
- Document how the work should happen
- Separate repetitive steps from judgment-based decisions
- Decide where AI can help
- Define where human approval must remain
- Build and test the AI-supported workflow
- Measure whether it saves time, reduces errors, or improves consistency
The goal is not to replace people indiscriminately.
The goal is to stop defaulting to additional headcount before determining whether the repetitive portion of the work can be handled safely and consistently by AI.
That allows employees and contractors to focus on the work that genuinely requires human ability.
Start With the Work
If you are considering hiring another employee, contractor, or freelancer, schedule a Free 45-Minute Clarity Call.
We will examine one recurring responsibility, identify where time or information is being lost, and determine whether your next move should be a person, an AI Employee, or both.
Before you hire more help, make sure you understand the work you are hiring them to do.