The redundancy notice is not the end of the story when agents arrive

If your role is put at risk because an employer is bringing in AI agents, the notice is not the last word. The agent that takes over routine work still needs people to review what it holds, correct what it gets wrong and answer for it. Your knowledge of the cases is exactly what those roles need. Use the notice period to put yourself forward for them.

Why does the knowledge you hold still matter?

An agent can be certified on a business's past cases. Those cases were handled by people like you. The certification shows the agent can do the routine version of your job within bounds. It does not show it can handle the case that never appeared in the test set: the unusual customer, the new fraud pattern, the policy that was quietly changed without notice.

That leaves work. In a governed setup, actions outside the agent's depth or above the business's limits are held for a named person. Refused actions need someone to check the refusal was right. Patterns need reporting. The people who do that work best are those who knew the cases before the agent arrived. Our explainer on whether AI operations jobs are a good fit for people facing redundancy looks at who tends to suit the work.

Why do employers often miss this?

Redundancy plans are usually built from headcount and cost. They count how many hours of routine work the agent will take. They are less good at counting the hours of review, correction and ownership the agent will create. Those hours often land on a manager who has no time for them, or on a reviewer hired from outside who does not know the business.

That is a gap you can point out. A manager who has to justify the agent's results to a senior team wants reviewers who will catch its errors early. You can offer that.

What should you do during the notice period?

Take the notice seriously, and use the time. Where your employer runs a consultation, it is a chance to ask questions and propose alternatives, so prepare for it.

1. Ask what the agent will and will not do. Which actions will be held for a person? Who will approve them? Your employer may also publish a transparency notice explaining where AI is used, which can tell you where the review work sits.
2. Write down what you know. List the cases in your work that need judgement: the exceptions, the awkward customers, the documents you never trust. This is your evidence.
3. Propose a role. Offer to review the agent's held items, own a part of its knowledge or help test it on real cases. Be specific about what you would do.
4. Learn the vocabulary. Understand depth, held, refused and withheld, and why a fact from the system of record is stronger than one from an emailed attachment.
5. Prepare for outside roles too. Whatever your employer decides, the same evidence works elsewhere.

Our guide on how people facing redundancy can start a career in AI operations goes through these steps in detail.

What does it look like in practice?

Take an accounts payable clerk we will call Helen at a distribution company. Her role is at risk because an agent will match invoices to purchase orders. During consultation, she asks who will approve the payments the agent drafts above the company's limit. Nobody has decided. She points out that she caught three invoice frauds in the past two years, all from changed bank details in emails. She proposes reviewing the agent's held payments part-time while helping test it on past invoices.

The company accepts a version of her proposal. It is not the same job, and it is not guaranteed to last, but it is a role built on what she knows, with a skill she can take elsewhere.

What is the trade-off?

Not everyone at risk will be redeployed. Review roles are usually fewer than the processing roles they replace, and they ask for different strengths: judgement under pressure, clear written reasons and comfort with accountability. Some people will not want them, and that is a fair choice.

There is also an emotional cost. Training the system that replaced part of your old job can feel wrong. It helps to see the review role as a different job that uses your experience, not a smaller version of the old one.

What if your employer says no?

Then you leave with better evidence than you had. Many employers outside your company are bringing in agents and need reviewers who know the work. Your list of exceptions, your understanding of governed agents and any measured review decisions you can show will count. Our article on how people facing redundancy can get into AI jobs without a computer science degree covers the outside route, and our case for why AI operations is a realistic career move for people facing redundancy sets out the caveats.

Pryme Intelligence Academy's Foundations course is free and takes about four hours, which makes it a low-cost first step during a notice period. Read the AI agent jobs and careers guide to see which roles sit nearest your experience.