I advise on a wide range of contentious and non-contentious employment matters at Bird & Bird. I have experience of acting for a range of companies and individuals involved in complex employment legal and HR issues.
As AI tools reshape how businesses hire, manage, and make decisions about their people, the legal risks are growing just as quickly as the technology itself.
Senior Associate Charles Hill, spoke to Reed about the employment law risks of agentic AI — from workforce restructuring and automated decision-making to the surge in AI-generated grievances that HR teams are already grappling with.
A: The biggest risk for employers using AI to manage their workforce is discriminatory, or otherwise unfair or unreasonable decisions, and outcomes from unchecked automated decision-making. Recruitment tools, for instance, can lead to biased hiring decisions if they are not properly analysed and monitored; similarly, tools used to make performance management decisions may overlook crucial context such as disability-related absence.
The sophistication of AI tools continues to rapidly increase, but the risks remain very tangible and without proper scrutiny of how these tools work and the outputs they produce, employers may unwittingly open themselves up to legal claims and reputational damage.
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