Acclaim Autism exists to help children with autism spectrum disorder, but before doing so, the Philadelphia-based company must receive approval from U.S. health insurers. Founder and President Jamie Turner says it typically took six months, with 80% of applications initially rejected. Insurers' processes vary widely: government agencies are generally easier to work with, but one commercial insurer requests original diagnostic documents—which for some teens could be more than a decade old—as well as documents issued within the last two years.
Introducing process management software from Appian with support from consultancy Ignyte Group, the company now sees 95% of applications accepted by insurers, with approval typically taking less than a month. The software scans diagnostic documents using artificial intelligence (AI) to find key pieces of information and predicts what a particular insurer will need to approve a treatment based on experience from previous denials.
Acclaim also used the software to give its 175 employees more options when filling out applications. Previously, Turner said, they used Salesforce's customer relationship management system, which required them to follow a set procedure to ensure they followed regulations and didn't start providing services until they received approval.
“It seemed to make sense to force the user through a linear flow,” he says. “But it was just a disaster. You can't force someone to get a diagnosis, then go through an insurance check, then go through something else, because it doesn't always work that way.”
The company has divided the application process into a series of separate tasks, which employees complete when they can. “The person who's helping this family through this process needs to get them into the service as early as possible and decide what they're going to do next based on what the family tells them,” Turner says.
By breaking down the monolithic application process, Acclaim Autism has increased its employees' “task discretion,” the level of choice they have over how they do work. But many workers have seen those levels drop in recent decades. UK Skills and Employment Surveywhich is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Department of Education, Acas and the Northern Ireland Department of Economic Affairs, includes interviewers from the Welsh Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data who speak to thousands of workers in person and online.
In 1992, 62% of those surveyed said they had a lot of influence over how they work, but in 2021 that figure had dropped to 44%, and by 2024 only 34% said that was the case. Other indicators of worker autonomy such as whether people feel they have influence over changes in their work also fell.
Managers at computers
Alan Felstead, emeritus professor at Cardiff University who led the study from 2022 to 2024, does not believe technology is responsible for reducing task discretion, although it may do so. “Workers are not controlled by computers, but workers are controlled by managers, and behind those computers are managers,” he says. “Computers do have the ability to take away agency.”
The 2024 survey found that 40% of respondents say technology gives them control over their work, although only 18% say technology determines if and when they get work done.
Felsted adds that greater freedom to choose tasks has big benefits for both workers and employers. “What we see from the data is that greater employee engagement increases employee motivation, well-being and productivity. It really is a win-win situation,” he says, adding that there should be a national campaign to encourage work engagement.
Some business software providers are trying to increase task flexibility by making routine work easier and faster. San Francisco-based technology provider Dropbox. Throw The service, currently only available to US users, brings together content from apps including Gmail, Microsoft Teams and Slack, as well as file storage sites including Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. It allows users to ask questions in natural language and receive AI-generated answers that include links to source material, so the user can request an appointment time and receive a text response with the ability to check the scheduling document containing the information.
Andy Wilson, senior director of new product solutions at Dropbox, says Dash works especially well for people who have to connect things and people together, such as project managers coordinating the work of people across different places and organizations. The idea is to save them time spent searching for information. “The more we can do to give people confidence and save time, the more freedom they have to do their jobs easier and better,” he says.
Notion, also based in San Francisco, aims to combine existing tools into a single workspace that includes automated agents. Mick Hodgins, the company's general manager in Europe, has an agent who writes a report every Monday at 7 a.m. outlining what he needs to do that week.
Another example is an agent who seeks changes to key operating documents of a multinational company's national subsidiaries so that global documentation can be updated. “This is a man who has a tribe of agents in his life who act for him in the background, doing all the dirty work,” he says. “You create space to live your best life and do your best work.”
Notion provides agents that they can use and customize, and also allows users to create their own, using Lego building blocks as their visual metaphor. Daniel Lereya, director of product and technology at Monday.com, based in New York and Tel Aviv, also uses building blocks to describe his company's “flexibility in practice” model, which allows users to create and change how processes work, including the ability to make changes to the standard interface instead of using a special editing mode.
Monday started out as a project management tool and later expanded into other areas such as customer relationship management. Lereya says its customization capabilities are often useful in organizations and even departments where developers working on projects with deadlines separated by months often prefer other processes to those with daily deadlines.
The setup also works well for professionals relying on processes they've developed themselves: one user in insurance used Monday to run a custom-designed risk analysis process and turn it into a sophisticated visualization. Users are encouraged to use a single data lake for security and reliability purposes, and companies can establish common rules either for governance or to promote an organization-wide theme such as quality improvement.
Lerea sees another reason to let people do things their own way. “I think there's an emotional component to it,” he says. “When you create your own solution, you are attached to it. We see people talking proudly about the things they created on Monday.”
The vendor is introducing AI-powered tools that users will need to manage effectively. “It also makes the journey of creating what you need yourself even more important,” he adds.
Move engagement upstream
Adam Cantwell-Cornhead of technology and artificial intelligence policy at the UK Trades Union Congress, believes staff participation should also apply to technology projects, including the early stages when problems are identified and decisions are made. “Often we see that where there is interaction – and often there isn't – it happens much further after contracts are signed and the IT system is set up,” he says. “It’s like some kind of training that’s screwed on.”
He says digital technologies can either empower or disempower workers, depending on how they are used. Automation tends to reduce discretion in performing tasks, but when applied to labor-intensive, routine work, it can increase people's ability to do higher-value work by increasing the time available. But automating all such work can have its own dangers, as workers may appreciate the variety in switching between high-intensity and routine tasks.
Seeming routine work can hide valuable effort: using software to transcribe and summarize meetings, for example, between social workers and clients, can save time, but will lead to cognitive unloadingwhen employees don't listen to the software rather than actively participate in what their customers are saying. Human employees are also more likely to notice AI biases or hallucinations if they are actively involved in the work. And people doing the same jobs may disagree about how much automation suits them: Some call center workers don't like software that tells them what to say next, while others welcome it as a way to get their jobs done according to management's expectations.
All of this shows the value of staff involvement in project creation, Cantwell-Corn says, including how the organization can help improve or redeploy its skills. “A lot of it has to do with good change management practices in general, people being active participants,” he says. “Active participation is not a nice thing, it is an important component of achieving good results.”
If this does not happen during project setup, it may happen later when employees come up with workarounds for poorly designed processes.
Public generative AI
Felsted says many employees informally use publicly available generative AI systems to increase flexibility in completing tasks, although some organizations are addressing this issue by providing controlled and secure versions for staff use.
More broadly, he believes many managers want to give their employees more flexibility in how they get things done. Skills and Employment Survey showing that the proportion of organizations advising employees on how they work has increased, but some line managers are undermining these efforts.
Felsted says one way to solve this problem is through a fairly mundane, technology-enabled process: a staff survey, asking employees how much freedom they have in performing tasks. Some of the questions used in the survey to assess this are presented in a shorter version, available through online quiz.
He says the results can be used to evaluate the performance of line managers, giving them a reason to give their staff more choice in how they work: “All the evidence suggests it benefits everyone, so why aren't we doing it?”
