Steven Shoemaker’s Deel session at Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo London 2026 raised a practical question for HR: who is responsible for the machines that are beginning to do work? My strongest takeaway was that delegating activity to an agent does not remove human accountability. As organisations consider a workforce that includes agent capacity, they need to define ownership, responsibilities and review alongside the technology itself.
The official Gartner session description places agent capacity within workforce planning and calls for clear governance and human accountability for agent decisions. My notes captured the point that an agent may currently log in as a person. That observation made the issue tangible. If work is carried out through someone else’s access, leaders need to be clear about the responsibility attached to the activity and how its results will be examined.
Steven Shoemaker’s slide assigned human ownership across agent activities. Photograph from Alison’s session notes.
Looking beyond access to the full lifecycle
A photographed slide compared the processes surrounding people and agents. It showed hiring and access for both, then highlighted gaps in ownership, review and retirement on the agent side. Its argument was that organisations may be introducing agents without the full set of responsibilities they routinely associate with a human role. I took this as a useful prompt to look across the lifecycle rather than concentrate only on deployment.
My interpretation is that giving an agent access should trigger further questions. What is it meant to do? Who can change that remit? Who checks whether its work is acceptable? Who decides it should stop? These are management questions as well as technical ones. Making them explicit would help the organisation understand the new capacity it is introducing and the human responsibilities that accompany it.
Giving every agent an accountable owner
My notes record Shoemaker’s guidance that an agent should have a manager, a job description and a review. The ownership photograph illustrated roles such as workforce architect, people partner and operation lead, with activities including recruiting, onboarding, performance, payroll, analytics and audit. The slide connected an owner with granting access, reviewing work and retiring the agent. It made accountability operational rather than leaving it as a general aspiration.
I would use that guidance to create a conversation about responsibility for each agent’s contribution. The purpose is to make the boundaries of delegated work understandable to people. Human managers and specialists still need to decide what is acceptable, how exceptions are handled and when a result needs attention. That is my application of the session’s central point about retaining accountability when activity is delegated.
Including agents in workforce decisions
The discussion also has implications for workforce planning. If leaders expect an agent to take on tasks, I would want the plan to include the human work around it: setting direction, reviewing output and responding when the situation changes. Otherwise, an apparent addition of capacity could be considered without enough attention to the responsibilities needed to use it effectively.
That connects this session with the wider conference discussion about redesigning work. A mixed workforce still needs clear decisions about which activities belong together and where people contribute expertise. My reflection is that HR can help leaders describe that arrangement in language people understand, while partnering with IT on the access and operating arrangements. Responsibility for the outcome should be visible across those conversations.
Shoemaker offered a timely and concrete contribution to Gartner’s exploration of human-AI work. As AmpliTask’s founder, I would carry forward a simple management discipline: describe the work, identify its owner and define how it will be reviewed. The agent may perform an activity, but a person remains responsible for the conditions in which it operates and the decisions made about its contribution. That clarity should be part of the design from the beginning.
Sources
Session notes and photographs by Alison, Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo London 2026.