Questions we answerAI and automation
Should I hire or automate this role?
It depends on what the work actually is. Repeatable, frequent, low-judgement work can often be automated; durable, growing, judgement-heavy work usually needs a person. Most real roles are a mix, and the honest answer is often to automate part of it first.
Free · a few minutes · starts from “I think we need another person”
The short answer
It depends on what the role would actually spend its time on. If most of it is repeatable steps with little judgement, automation is faster, cheaper and does not need managing. If most of it is judgement, relationships or work shaped case by case, a person is the answer and AI at best makes them quicker. Many roles are a mix, and the useful move is to separate the two before deciding: automate the repeatable part and hire against what is genuinely left.
Framed as hire versus automate, the question already assumes the role is one thing. It rarely is. The parts that repeat with the same steps each time are candidates for automation; the parts that need judgement, relationships or novelty are not.
The diagnostic asks about the work behind the role — how much of it repeats, how often it comes up, how long the need has lasted and where it is heading — and weighs recruiting against AI, process change and outside help on the same terms.
Is it really this?
Worth checking before you spend anything. These are the signals that tend to tell the two apart.
Signs it is
- The work turns on judgement, relationships or novelty more often than not.
- Exceptions are frequent and each one needs a decision.
- You would still want somebody accountable for the outcome even if the routine parts vanished.
Signs it's something else
- Most of the week is the same steps in the same order.
- The inputs arrive in a system and leave in a system, with a person in the middle.
- You could describe the role as a checklist without losing much of it.
What's usually behind it
- A role that has grown around one person and now mixes routine admin with real judgement.
- Volume that has outgrown the team, in work that has never been simplified.
- A missing skill that a person could supply and software cannot.
What people usually get wrong
- Treating the role as one indivisible thing when it is three jobs in a trench coat.
- Automating the visible half and leaving a person with only exceptions and no context.
- Recruiting for a role whose routine half will be automated within the year.
The options, and when each one fits
In no particular order. Which of these fits depends on your situation, not on the question you typed.
Recruit for the whole role
Judgement, relationships and exceptions make up most of the work.
Automate part, recruit smaller
A clear, documented slice repeats and the rest genuinely needs a person.
Give the current holder AI assistance
Someone already does this and is slowed down by drafting, checking and copying.
Simplify the role first
It has accumulated tasks from several jobs and nobody has pruned it.
When doing nothing is the right call
If the role is currently held together by one person who is coping, and neither the volume nor the risk is rising, waiting a quarter costs little. Use the time to write down which parts repeat — that single list decides the question either way.
What the diagnostic asks
- What a new person would mainly add: capacity, a missing skill, or both.
- How repeatable the work is and how often it comes up.
- How long this has been the case, whether it is growing, and who owns the work today.
- Whether a permanent hire is realistically fundable.
“I don't know” is always an answer. Nothing is assumed on your behalf.
The routes it weighs
Every diagnostic weighs all ten routes. These are the ones that tend to matter for this question — a description of the rules, not a promise about your answer.
Recruit
Recruit a new person for a durable, sizeable need that is central to the team.
AI Agent
Delegate a defined, repeatable workflow to software inside boundaries you set, with human oversight.
AI Assist
Keep a person in charge and give them AI for drafting, summarising, checking or analysis.
Process improvement
Change how the work flows — remove steps, name an owner, fix the hand-offs.
Outsource
Hand a defined, ongoing scope of work to an external provider.
Specialist support
Bring in a freelancer, consultant or specialist for a defined piece of work.
What changes the answer
- Repeatable, frequent, documented work with little judgement points at automation before a hire.
- A growing, durable need for judgement or relationships points at a person.
- Work nobody owns is an ownership problem first, whichever way you go.
Get your own read
A handful of short questions, then the strongest route for your situation, what's also credible, what we still don't know and what would change our view. No account, no setup.
Related questions
- Should I automate this work?If it is repeatable, frequent, low-judgement and written down, quite possibly. If any of those is missing, fix that first.
- Repetitive admin is eating the weekWork out how much of it should exist at all before automating any of it. Some repetitive admin is a process nobody has simplified, some is a good candidate for software, and a little of it genuinely needs a person.
- What should my next hire be?Start from the constraint rather than the wish list. The right next hire is the one that releases the most work or removes the largest risk — which is often not the role that feels most overdue.
- Should I hire another person?Sometimes. Whether a hire is the proportionate answer depends on how durable the need is, whether anyone owns the work today, and what a new person would actually add.
- Can AI handle customer enquiries?Part of them, well, with a person holding the line. The split that matters is between enquiries with known answers and those needing judgement, empathy or authority.
- Is my process ready to automate?Four things have to be true: the steps repeat, they are written down, it happens often enough to pay back, and someone can say what a failure costs.