AI as a hire is a way of filling a role in your business with an AI employee rather than a person or a piece of software. You name the job, agree what it covers in writing, and a provider such as Struan builds, runs and answers for the role. The process runs from the first scoping call through to the weekly report, so you can judge whether an AI employee fits the work in front of you.
How an AI employee differs from a software subscription
An AI employee is scoped to the work your business needs before anything is built. You and the provider agree a job description that names the jobs it covers, the inboxes, files or workspaces it may open, what comes back, and who approves it. The role does the work named in that document, and nothing outside it.
Illustrative example, not a customer result: a finance role might cover invoice entries, reconciliation and chasing overdue balances. The role reads the invoices, posts the entries and drafts the chase emails. A named person on the finance team checks the entries, clears exceptions and approves anything going to a customer before it sends. The example shows the shape of a role. It is not a guaranteed outcome for every business.
What actually happens when you hire an AI employee
The process runs in stages, and each stage needs your agreement before the next one starts.
- A free scope call covers the jobs your team repeats, the tools you already run and who signs off what. If an AI employee does not suit the work, you are told on the call.
- You agree a job description in writing before anything is built. It names the jobs, the sources the role may open, the output and the approver.
- The role is proven on your own live work before you agree to run it, so you see real output before committing to anything.
- The role goes live inside the chat tool your team already uses, such as Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace. Work you have gated waits for a named approver to say yes.
- Struan runs the role every day, corrects mistakes as they come up and tunes the role as the work changes. A named person at Struan signs a report your team reads every week.
What it costs, and how that is decided
The written quote separates the cost of building the role from the ongoing managed-service fee. Agree the scope, the work each fee covers and how changes will be priced before anything is built. The right cost and the right scope depend on the role you are filling. Struan's full comparison against hiring, software and outsourcing, including the rows where an AI employee is not the better option, is on the Compare page.
Is an AI employee the right first hire?
An AI employee tends to fit well where the work is repetitive, has clear inputs and outputs, and is currently done by hand by someone on your team. It fits less well where every case genuinely needs fresh judgement with no consistent pattern, or where you cannot name the sources the role should work from. The scope call is designed to give you a straight answer either way, including a no.
See the paperwork before you decide
Before you commit to anything, you can see what the job description, the approval record and the signed weekly report actually look like on the sample report page, and how data is held and who approves what on the security page.
Book a sense-check call to go through the jobs your team repeats and get a straight answer on whether an AI employee fits. The first call is free.
If you want to see real work first, four deployments are written up in full on the proof page.
Once a role is running, the next question is usually how day to day management, approvals and mistakes are actually handled. How managed AI employees are run day to day covers that in full.