COMPLYING WITH THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS

A Profile of Debbie Riazzi at AWP Safety

By Patrick McConville

June 17, 2026

Fine print is a labyrinth of details. As we know, the details are where the devil hides. When was the last time you read every word of a Terms of Service agreement before signing? Have you ever read the Terms of Service?

Debbie Riazzi finds the devil in the details for AWP Safety (Area Wide Protective), an Ohio-based company providing high-quality traffic control equipment throughout North America. As Director of Compliance and Labor Relations, Debbie is a sentinel ensuring AWP's adherence to local and federal laws across 28 states and six Canadian provinces. Debbie sees her responsibilities clearly, "I'm a one person department. We've got almost 8,000 employees, and I'm trying to keep all these state laws straight."

Human Resources and Compliance are often perceived as a professional hindrance. Consider the way THE OFFICE treated Michael Scott's nemesis from HR, Toby. HR's duty of keeping employees on task creates an unfair association. It's like blaming a meteorologist for a thunderstorm.

Compliance ensures a company follows the law so that it may stay in business. They ensure standards are upheld and hold the company accountable to the employees and vice versa. Your job may take longer to accomplish, but in the end, HR ensures your job exists and that the company acknowledges your humanity.

COMPLY WITH AI

Business happens in the fine print. Debbie explains her role at AWP Safety is, "to ensure all of our locations across the United States are compliant with state and federal laws." Those laws pertain to payroll, employment, and the Department of Transportation. As for labor relations, Debbie oversees all of the union facilities throughout the United States. Debbie notes that the company is "not fully union, but in the areas that we are, I assist with contract negotiations, grievance meetings, labor relations, and management meetings."

This has made Debbie well-versed in "legalese" that fills contracts. But as a one-person compliance department at AWP Safety, there is more work than her schedule can handle.

"Legal language can be very confusing. People look at it and say, 'I don't really understand what this means'. And so yes, I help them interpret that.'"

Making matters difficult is these contracts' boilerplate nature. The template overlaps from company to company, forcing the reader to dig in through the minutiae. Similar terminology makes the details feel redundant. This is the most likely place where human error occurs. That made it an ideal area for Debbie to utilize Artificial Intelligence. She began by plugging all of the Collective Bargaining Agreements involving AWP Safety into ChatGPT. Then, she prompted AI to scour each section for specific criteria (attendance, etc.) and asked, "OK, define for me what rules are in each of these CBA? Which ones are more beneficial to the company? Can you combine those and show me a proposal?"

In the pre-AI world, compliance was paperwork intensive. "I was going to multiple places just to get started on a CBA." Using the enterprise version of ChatGPT, Debbie scours through the history of grievances she's entered into the company database. That allows her to discover set precedents, AWP Safety's response, and the recommended resolution. Before AI, "I would have to go back through manually into folders and say, I remember that we had a grievance about this. When was it? Where was it?" Now, all of that information is searchable in a single place.

"I've been able to take language from across multiple documents and condense it down to the best version that would help to support us as a company, and what we're trying to accomplish."

This has been beneficial with client contracts, improving consistency, and making them easier to manage. Streamlining the process makes for more accurate data. Memory is limited. You may recall a similar case to the one you're investigating, but the details are elusive. Was it this case or that case? This company or that company? Instead of rifling through filing cabinets, AI starts you with 75% of what you need to accomplish a task.

Debbie applies the same process to medical accommodations when employees change job duties, "Personally, just on the East Coast, I manage anywhere from four to six accommodation requests a week." Using a project within ChatGPT, Debbie can quickly answer the standard list of questions. Not only does this automatically reduce AWP Safety's liability as a company, but it's a helpful reference to prove the company is performing its due diligence consistently.

Accountability is more transparent than ever before.

ACCOUNTABILITY

In a 1993 episode of "The Simpsons", Marge takes a job working alongside Homer at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. When heading to work, Homer informs Marge should anything go wrong, just blame Tibor.

"Now Marge, just remember, if something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English. Ah, Tibor, how many times have you saved my butt?"

Later, Homer laments that he's used to seeing people promoted over him… 'Friends. Coworkers. Tibor.' In many ways, the media is attempting to make AI a Tibor-like scapegoat for businesses.

When the time comes for an employee to be held responsible for the actions of AI, they may blame the machine as the problem. Over time, workers' ability to perform the tasks they offload to AI will decline, granting AI authority over your business. AI is poised to become a digital Tibor. Do not allow yourself to become a 21st Century Homer.

As an individual user, it all depends upon your perspective when utilizing AI. If you use AI to do more with less, then you are susceptible to having your entire job outsourced. If you use AI to do more with more, AI is a tool to improve your work and unlock greater potential. As one of the first employees at her company with access to ChatGPT's enterprise version, Debbie has keen insight into the various camps people sort themselves into over AI. To Debbie, there are four approaches people take to AI:

People who fear it's going to take their jobs.
CEOs who want everyone to use it.
Individuals who become overly reliant upon it.
Individuals not using it to its fullest advantage.

"People usually resist change because they don't understand it."

Misunderstanding is more frequent if the perceived goal of using AI is doing more with less. Using AI to do more with more requires vigilant employees. While recently comparing the language between CBA and prevailing wage rules in a particular state, Debbie asked AI to create a table illustrating the difference in overtime rules. The prompt response looked good, but as Debbie reviewed it, she realized something wasn't quite correct. "I know our CBAs like the back of my hand. I negotiated them. The table had stated in our contract that we paid double time on Sunday." ChatGPT's response was confident, but ultimately off, "Well, I know that we don't." Debbie pushed back on ChatGPT, wondering where the program had sourced this information. When confronted, ChatGPT apologized, "You're right to question that. Because it's not listed in the CBA." Had Debbie not fully understood her work, this hallucination could have created major issues for the company.

Debbie recognizes that if anyone accepts all AI output as immutable truth, they're creating unnecessary risk for the company. "AI cannot replace individual knowledge, human knowledge." A good supervisor does not submit an employee's work without reviewing it first. AI forces every worker to be a good supervisor. We're all managers now. Without human oversight, AI becomes the unaccountable liability its detractors decry.

On the other hand, with the right prompting and context, Debbie has set up her AI to generate reliable, relevant, expertly phrased questions that Debbie asks consistently to each client, "that automatically reduces our reliability as a company. Because I can go back and show I've been doing this consistently." Using AI in this fashion, Debbie has actually increased the accountability and compliance of her own work. The tool boosts efficiency by helping you show your work and accomplish it.

Debbie recognizes that under utilizing AI is also a mistake, "This is a jumping off point for me…Not the finish line." An employee has to make technology work for them, not the other way around.

STEP INTO THE AI LAB

AWP's Chief Legal Officer and Debbie's supervisor, Matt Hunt knew there was an opportunity to reduce the amount of busy work for Debbie in compliance. He introduced her to AI itself in 2024, "I remember sitting in Matt's office, and he asked, 'have you heard about this ChatGPT thing?" With a willingness to test the new technology, and an unwillingness to expose AWP, Debbie set up a consumer ChatGPT account on her personal phone. She consulted what to wear and what to make for dinner out of what's in the cupboard. She quickly began to see the personal value. But professionally, the cumbersome nature of redacting information (to ensure compliance on a personal account) eliminated any time savings. The potential was obvious, but there was an organizational disconnect.

By the start of 2025, AWP Safety's Executive Leadership team committed itself to taking down this disconnect and identifying how AI could support the organization. They began researching vendors and became overwhelmed by all the options and the potential risks involved. They turned to The AI Lab as a trusted lens to understand the AI landscape. Ryan Kurt, The AI Lab CEO and founder, understood their needs, having supported countless similar situations, and helped them develop organizational AI policies that were safe, clear, and flexible. This included hands-on coaching so their employees could get the most out of AI. And at the top of the list of piloters for this AI coaching initiative was Debbie.

Debbie had already lit the match on her AI journey. A personal coach from The AI Lab provided the gasoline. From Debbie's personal ChatGPT use, she had a foundational understanding of how AI worked but she was only using the basics. Once paired up with Anca Laslau of The AI Lab, Debbie's AI fluency and ability quickly exploded. Through intensive coaching, both in-person and virtually, Anca provided tailored, thoughtful guidance and met Debbie where she was at. In one of these regular meetings with The AI Lab, Debbie asked, "Here are these really time consuming processes. How can I cut back the amount of time I'm spending on administering these processes so that I can focus more on the strategy of my role?"

Anca listened carefully and knew how to solve it. But instead of building a solution for Debbie, Anca taught her how to make AI work for her. She demonstrated how to set up projects in ChatGPT, how to document AWP's historic information for an LLM to read, and how to build and prompt agents to garner reliable results that worked even when she wasn't. Observing Debbie's appetite for learning, the AI Lab advocated to management to fit Debbie with enterprise access. Armed with secure, live data, and the confidence on how to get the most out of ChatGPT, Debbie reduced errors and increased efficiency. The result of this streamlined process was massive time savings. How much time? Debbie notes, "On the accommodation requests alone… probably somewhere around 10 hours a week."

This has freed up Debbie's work day to renew her focus on strategy. That list of projects that Debbie started when she first took up the compliance role in 2023 is finally getting addressed, "I can never get to my projects because I'm so deep in the administrative piece of it. Now, I can focus on projects that are going to take us (AWP Safety) to our next level." This shift in the work process has helped Debbie become proactive instead of reactive, "I'm no longer putting out fires. I'm preventing those fires from happening." And all it took was the right attitude, paired with the right tools (used in the right way), and personalized help when she needed it.

This is how AI makes work more human. Monotonous tasks eating business hours, forcing you to work late to finish your work is a drain on our well-being. Being able to get out in front of those tasks so you can get deeper on the list of things you want to do with your job is a bonus. Not just to your company, but to your soul.

TIME SAVINGS

Becoming an early adopter of AI Tools has given Debbie a headstart on where the work world is heading. She notes, "It's no longer about 'Is AI going to take my job?'… It's more along the lines of, if you don't have this knowledge moving forward, you're not going to be considered for hiring."

Having started her career in Human Resources, Debbie doesn't take displacing workers lightly. AI is a tool that needs to be operated alongside a skilled worker. It shrinks the time needed to complete a task, but does not complete the task without guidance. The results are only as good as the operator, Debbie notes, "If you put in a mediocre direction to it, you're going to get a mediocre result."

Debbie modeled professional evolution by embracing the opportunity to use AI when it arrived, "I'd rather be on the leading edge of that and take advantage of any learning opportunities."

It's like preparing for a change in seasons. When you're working through February in western Pennsylvania, you don't ignore the fact that spring is around the corner. You look at the calendar and prepare accordingly. Starting the process of trial and error helped Debbie trust how AI could benefit her work.

The greatest impact on her work has been time saved. To quantify just how much time saved, Debbie cited an example of using ChatGPT for a larger project.

Debbie and a colleague co-chaired AWP Safety's Crisis Response Playbook. Department heads submitted Standard Operating Procedures, which Debbie condensed into ordered checklists. They created a project for the Crisis Response Playbook in ChatGPT, and Debbie prompted, "We need you to create a Top Five responsibility checklist." Basically, they asked for a call checklist for teams to inform what they need, and what the teams need to report up the chain of command in the event of a specific crisis that may occur within the company.

"I'm not exaggerating when I say that it took probably two and a half months worth of work that we would have had to do, given our other responsibilities, and completed it for us" in one weekend. Starting the work at close of business on Friday, Debbie would check in on ChatGPT's progress every two hours. Over the weekend, Debbie had to fine tune the prompt as it returned results, but by Saturday afternoon, the Crisis Response Playbook was ready to go, "You're talking months worth of work in less than 24 hours."

Debbie is quick to note that this wasn't automatic, "The initial report it came back with was too basic." Like any manager, Debbie gave specific feedback and refined the text to suit the project she intended. The Playbook development process was largely the same as it's always been. It was simply accomplished at a much faster rate.

PERSONAL BENEFIT OF AI

AI has the potential to be a great equalizer. Doomers will note that AI dehumanizes work. Boosters will state that it frees workers up to focus on what they truly care about. Debbie found a realistic middleground in how she uses the technology. It has been a boon to her confidence. Debbie explains, "For years, I struggled with imposter syndrome in the workplace.… I don't have a college degree. I don't have any of those pretty HR certifications that everybody else has."

Debbie has always been willing to work hard and put in however much time it takes to get the job done. Imposter Syndrome makes people believe that any success they have can be attributed to dedication rather than skill. Using ChatGPT helped Debbie realize how well she understands her job. Success comes from the work she puts into the hours, not the hours she puts into the work.

"What ChatGPT has helped me understand about myself personally is that I do know this information… It's almost a validation for me that I do have the knowledge and I do have the ability," Debbie noted.

She even uses ChatGPT to previsualize her career a decade from now. Debbie is working with ChatGPT to develop a business plan so that when she retires from AWP, she can go into HR Consulting on her own. Instead of simply dreaming about starting this business, Debbie has prompted ChatGPT to help her determine, "What the fee structure would look like. What I need to do to set up an LLC."

AI Tools are helping a professional who has spent her career working for larger companies develop a business of her own. Ironically, this new vocation would leverage the skills Debbie developed working with human beings. It's how AI can personalize work and make what we're doing more human.