Governing Digital Workers: Is Your GRC Program Ready for Agentic AI?
- Vinod Sreedharan
- Nov 11
- 4 min read
Authors: Vinod Sreedharan and Sarah Kassoff
What happens when your newest “employee” makes 10,000 decisions before lunch, without asking permission once?
This isn’t fiction anymore, rather is the reality of Agentic AI, and it's creating an urgent mandate for GRC leaders everywhere. The shift from algorithms as tools to algorithms as an autonomous digital workforce means we must evolve from reactive risk mitigation to building proactive governance frameworks that don't just control this new workforce but actively enable the business.
The question from leaders is no longer "what is this technology?" but "how do we govern it?"
The Shift: From Generative AI to Agentic AI
For the past few years, business leaders have focused on the usage of Generative AI as a leverage to augment business productivity and efficiencies. From the GRC side, we learned its vocabulary, explored its potential, and built preliminary risk assessments around procedures and policies of use.
Now we face a more urgent question: "How do we govern and control it?"
This shift is driven by the rise of Agentic AI. We're no longer dealing with predictive models that simply offer recommendations. We're now confronting autonomous AI agents that can plan and execute complex tasks, learn from their interactions, and operate independently. They are, in effect, a new digital workforce.
Here's what makes this different:
Imagine an AI agent authorized to optimize supply chain procurement. Operating autonomously, it could renegotiate 50 vendor contracts in an hour, analyze market conditions in real-time, and automatically redirect shipments based on emerging risks. But without proper guardrails, it might violate data privacy regulations, create unauthorized financial commitments, or inadvertently discriminate against certain suppliers.
This workforce operates at machine speed, 24/7. It can be designed to act without waiting for human approval on every decision. The profound implication for GRC leaders? Our traditional, human-speed-governance models are already obsolete.
Auditing an agent after it has taken a thousand actions is a failed strategy. We must govern in real-time.
The Pivot: From Risk Mitigation to Strategic Enablement
The natural instinct for any risk or compliance professional is to mitigate risks. We see a new technology, identify its potential harms, and build walls to contain it. With Agentic AI, this reactive, conservative posture is a strategic error.
Why? Because a governance framework that only says "no" will be bypassed, ignored, or will simply cede the future to faster competitors.
The modern GRC leader understands a different mandate: The goal is not to stop the digital workforce, but to strategically direct it.
Thereby, GRC leaders need to mandate, influence and catalyze building the ethical, trust-enhancing, and operational guardrails that allow these agents to operate safely, responsibly, effectively, and in perfect alignment with business strategy.
This is the pivot from GRC as a defense-only function to GRC as a strategic enabler. Organizations that only focus on mitigating Agentic AI's risks will be outmaneuvered. The winners will be those who build governance frameworks that enable innovation thereby allowing them to deploy their digital workforce responsibly and effectively, with speed, confidence, and trust.
The Accountability Challenge
The pressure to adopt Agentic AI is immense. Business leaders see a direct path to automating complex workflows and unlocking profound value. For GRC leaders, this autonomy presents a fundamental challenge: accountability.
We're no longer just mitigating flawed outputs and poor decisions but we're critically governing independent actions and critical outcomes. When an autonomous agent accesses sensitive customer data, commits company resources, or engages with third parties, your organization retains 100% of the liability. Without a new framework, you risk compliance failures and data breaches that remain invisible until it's too late.
Consider these emerging scenarios:
An HR agent conducting thousands of resume screenings with embedded bias
A financial agent making trading decisions that inadvertently violate regulations
A customer service agent sharing proprietary information without proper authorization
Your organization cannot deploy a digital workforce it doesn't trust. Your role as a GRC leader is to build that trust, transforming governance from a roadblock into an accelerator for innovation.
A New Governance Model for a New Workforce
A human employee has a manager, a job description, and performance reviews. A digital agent needs the same. It requires a governance structure that is balanced, automated, continuous, and integrated.
Here's how the paradigm must shift:
The Old Model (For Tools) | The New Framework (For Agents) |
Focus: Risk Mitigation | Focus: Strategic Enablement |
Method: Manual, static policies | Method: Automated, dynamic guardrails |
Timing: Periodic, after-the-fact audits | Timing: Continuous, real-time monitoring |
Goal: Prevention and restriction | Goal: Governance, control and alignment |
Your Role as the Architect
GRC leaders must become the architects of this new framework. We're responsible for:
Defining each agent's "job description" and scope of authority
Programming ethical boundaries and decision-making parameters
Building oversight systems that monitor continuously
Establishing intervention mechanisms before deployment
Creating audit trails that make agent actions transparent
The digital workforce is here. It will not wait for our governance models to catch up.
Take Action Now
The organizations that thrive will be those whose GRC leaders step forward to build frameworks that unlock, rather than block, this new era of productivity.
Archer AI Governance enables risk managers to manage AI risks, maintain compliance, and promote ethical AI practices across your organization. Our platform provides the real-time oversight, automated controls, and strategic frameworks you need to govern your digital workforce effectively.
The Governing Digital Workers Series
Over the coming weeks, we'll provide a comprehensive blueprint for governing your digital workforce. Each installment will offer practical frameworks, implementation strategies, and real-world considerations.
Upcoming Topics:
Your Next New Hire is an AI Agent
Why you must "onboard" your digital agent with the same rigor as a human employee from defining job descriptions and access privileges to conducting bias checks and establishing performance metrics.
The Agent Workforce Charter The strategic blueprint for defining an agent's mission, operational boundaries, and rules of engagement. Learn how to create clear mandates that ensure safe, aligned outcomes while enabling autonomous action.
Operationalizing AI Governance The essential, non-negotiable controls that translate governance strategy into operational reality. We'll explore mechanisms like the "Digital Leash" (real-time constraint systems) and "Circuit Breakers" (automatic shutdown triggers) that keep agents operating within bounds.
The Trust Premium How to reframe AI governance not as a cost center, but as the C-suite's engine for building stakeholder trust and creating defensible competitive advantage. Organizations with robust AI governance can move faster, not slower.
