To delegate ongoing work to an AI employee, give it a responsibility with a clear outcome, the sources it should use, permission to handle routine steps and a named person for exceptions. Then test whether it can finish a real case without you supplying the next instruction.
“Help with customer onboarding” leaves most of the job undefined. Should the employee summarize a handoff, chase unfinished setup tasks or keep following the customer until the agreed milestone is complete? A useful assignment answers those questions before the work starts.
Here is a practical brief you can adapt, followed by a worked example and a first-run checklist.
Choose a responsibility with a visible finish
Start with work your team already understands. Customer onboarding follow-ups, a weekly operating report or keeping a project board current are easier to define when someone can show a good previous result.
For each responsibility, identify what starts a case and what finishes it. A new customer handoff might start the work. Confirmation that the customer completed the agreed setup milestone might finish it. The employee can continue owning the responsibility while closing individual cases.
Write the outcome in terms of the work your team needs. “Send five reminders” measures activity. “Every open onboarding case has a current owner, next step and due date” gives you something to inspect. Completing the customer's setup is a separate result that may depend on other people.
An effective first assignment also has a manageable audience. Choose one team or queue before asking an AI employee to coordinate the whole company.
Give it the context a colleague would need
Point to the actual working records. For onboarding, that could mean the sales handoff, customer record and setup board. Explain what each source establishes. The handoff contains agreed promises, the customer record identifies the account owner, and the setup board shows the open tasks.
Include one example your team considers good and explain why. A useful status update might name the blocker, link the task and make the next decision obvious. A long account history might be accurate without helping anyone move the work forward.
Specify how to handle conflicting information. If an old meeting note gives one date and the current project board gives another, the employee needs a way to resolve the difference. Name the governing record or the person who decides. Otherwise, a confident summary can hide an unresolved disagreement.
Copy this AI delegation brief
Fill in these eight lines before your first run. The brief should be short enough to use again when the responsibility changes.
Responsibility: Own [workflow] for [team or group of cases].
Outcome: Each case should end with [observable result]. If it cannot, report [specific blocker and next decision].
Start and finish: Begin when [trigger]. Stop following a case when [completion condition].
Context: Use [record] for [fact], [record] for [status] and [example] for the expected output. Resolve conflicts through [source or owner].
Routine actions: Without asking again, [read, draft, update or send], limited to [records, fields, recipients and conditions].
Decisions to escalate: Ask [owner] before [decision]. Leave [excluded actions] outside this responsibility.
Updates: Report [cadence or event], including [completed work, blockers and links].
Completion check: Verify [saved change, accepted handoff or other evidence] before marking a case complete.
The routine-actions line matters as much as the exceptions. If the employee must ask before every ordinary step, the manager still has to carry the workflow. Define the actions you are comfortable delegating, then make sure the connected tools actually permit them.
Access and instructions serve different purposes. Writing “update the setup board” in a brief does not grant access to the board. Check the connection using a representative record before relying on it for ongoing work.
Work through an onboarding example
Consider this illustrative assignment for an operations team at a 60-person software company. It is a template to adapt, not a customer case study.
Responsibility: Keep new customer setup moving from sales handoff to the agreed first milestone.
Outcome: Every open case has an account owner, a current next step and a due date. Close the case when the account owner confirms that the setup milestone is complete.
Start and finish: Pick up new records in the onboarding queue each weekday. Stop following a case once completion is recorded. Send unresolved cases to the operations lead in the Friday review.
Context: Read the handoff for customer promises, the customer record for ownership and the setup board for task status. Use the team's accepted weekly update as the format reference. Ask the account owner to resolve conflicting dates.
Routine actions: Read these records, add source-linked status notes to the setup board and remind the named internal task owner when an agreed due date passes. Send at most one reminder per overdue task each working day. Draft customer messages for the account owner.
Decisions to escalate: Ask the account owner before changing a customer commitment or sending a customer message. Do not change contract terms, buy software or grant access.
Updates and checks: Link each changed task in the Friday update. Keep blocked cases open with the reason and the next decision. Verify saved updates before reporting them as complete.
Suppose a setup task is overdue because the customer has not supplied a file. The employee can update the internal status, remind the task owner and prepare a customer note under this brief. It does not need fresh permission for each internal step. It does need the account owner's decision before sending the customer note or promising a new date.
Check the first run before expanding the job
Run the assignment on a small set of representative cases. Include an ordinary case, one with missing information and one that needs a decision. Check the result in the destination system.
Did the employee find the right records and use current information?
Did it finish routine steps without unnecessary questions?
Did the right person receive a clear decision request when one was needed?
Do the saved changes match the reported outcome?
Are incomplete cases still visible, with a reason and a next step?
Record what you had to repair. An unclear source, missing permission and unsupported tool action need different fixes. More detailed wording will not repair a broken connection.
After a few runs, compare the time spent reviewing and correcting the work with the time the responsibility previously took. Keep quality visible alongside time saved. A faster update is useful only if the team can act on it.
Expand the assignment when the evidence supports it. That might mean another customer group or permission to send a narrowly defined routine message. Update the brief so the next run starts with the new scope.
Artie's introduction describes an AI employee built to own work across a business. Start with the responsibility your team most needs someone to carry, then use this brief to make that handoff concrete. Explore Artie.
