Choosing an autonomy level

Autonomy is set per action, not per worker. A worker that drafts correspondence, files documents and closes cases can be at a different level for each of those three things, and usually should be.

The three levels

Suggest. The worker proposes; nothing happens until a person acts. The suggestion sits on the case timeline with its reasoning attached.

Act with approval. The worker prepares the action fully — the email is written, the document is filed, the letter is addressed — and holds it for a named approver. Faster than Suggest because the work is already done; the decision is still a person's.

Act. The worker performs the action and records it. A person can review afterwards, and the timeline shows what happened and why, but nobody was asked first.

How to decide

The question is not "do we trust the agent" but "what does being wrong cost, and how quickly would we notice".

Move an action to Act when all four of these are true:

1. The action is reversible, or its consequence is small. Filing a document is reversible. Sending a final response to a complainant is not.
2. You have agreement data. You have run the action in Suggest or Act-with-approval long enough to see how often a person changed it. Not a feeling — the actual number, from the agreement report.
3. A wrong action is visible quickly. If a mistake would surface within a day, you can catch it. If it surfaces at an inspection in eleven months, you cannot.
4. You can say why in a sentence. If you cannot explain the threshold to your own risk team, you will not be able to explain it to a regulator either.

A shape that works

Teams that get this right tend to converge on the same pattern within a quarter:

• Coordination work at Act. Chasing, filing, diarising, acknowledging. This is where cycle time actually falls, because queue time was never about the decisions.
• Drafting at Act with approval. The work is done, a person presses send.
• Consequential decisions at Suggest. Anything that closes a case, refuses a claim, or commits money.

Changing a level

1. Open Settings → Digital workers.
2. Choose the worker, then the Actions tab.
3. Set the level on the action you want to change.
4. Record a reason. It is required, it goes into the audit log, and it is what you will be glad of later.

Changes take effect immediately for new cases. To see what changed and when, see Reading the audit log.