Rise in AI-driven grievances in UK firms creates new challenges for HR

Workers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence tools to help draft grievances and prepare claims for the employment tribunal. As People Management reports, it’s something that both employment lawyers and HR teams have noticed as grievances appear longer, more complex, and increasing difficult for HR to triage effectively. So how should HR teams navigate complaints that look more like technical, legal submissions? We’ll speak to one of our lawyers about that. 

There is no doubt, generative AI is changing the way employees raise concerns. So whilst the underlying issues haven’t necessarily changed, the form of the complaint has. AI tool such as Chat GPT can produce long, formal, confidently-worded documents at the click of a button, and that’s creating a number of challenges for HR.

One is volume and complexity. AI-drafted grievances tend to be far longer than traditional complaints, sometimes running to many pages, with arguments repeated several times and no clear structure. Simply working out what the core issue is can take a long time.

Another challenge is the legal tone. AI will readily add statutory references, case citations, and pseudo-legal analysis, and some of these can be irrelevant or even entirely invented. They may look impressive at first glance, but for HR they can distract from the facts and make the grievance appear more serious than it actually is.

The tone is another concern. AI often exaggerates language, makes accusations broader than the employee intended, and can harden expectations by giving overly optimistic assessments of the employee’s legal prospects. That can make early, informal resolution more difficult.

And finally, there’s the data issue. When employees use public AI tools, they may be uploading confidential company information or sensitive personal data about colleagues, which raises data protection and confidentiality risks for employers.

So let’s get a view on this. Laura Kennedy is one of the lawyers in our Glasgow office and earlier she joined me by phone to discuss it. So has she seen an increase in the number of AI-related grievances?

Laura Kennedy: “Yes, it’s absolutely fair to say that we have seen an increase in AI-related grievances and also the use of AI in the tribunal process and it's probably not surprising – many of us are being encouraged to use AI at work, therefore it's natural that, particularly when an individual's in a situation that's unfamiliar to them, that they use the tools at their disposal and we know that it doesn't take much effort to put information into AI and then receive back what looks like a professional sounding text which can make employees feel more confident in raising their concerns and makes them sound more articulate, incredible and, ultimately, that's what employees want when they're raising their concerns. They want to sound authoritative, and AI can help support them in doing that.”

Joe Glavina: “What’s the main challenge you’re seeing with grievances that have clearly been drafted using AI?”

Laura Kennedy: “I think the key one is that they're just much longer, they're more repetitive, they're less structured. It's becoming harder to actually isolate what are the real issues or the allegations. I also think it makes them appear more serious than potentially sometimes they actually are, and perhaps more intimidating, and that can be really difficult as well when there are legal references that AI can produce as part of these documents and all of that ultimately risks delays to the process to allow extra time for reading and triaging by HR when they get the grievance.”

Joe Glavina: “We know, of course, that AI tools get things wrong and sometimes invent case law and even make up facts. Have you come across that?”

Laura Kennedy: “Yes, I definitely have, and I’ve come across an Act that I didn't know existed and actually doesn't exist on further investigation but, again, it's back to that point where, when you see that, you're then looking into that to see if that's a credible legal risk rather than getting to what are the fundamental issues that the employee has, so it distracts attention away from the actual issues. But I do think that it does raise a very valid point, which is to check any references that you get in AI, and that's certainly something that I would absolutely recommend doing before referring to them.”

Joe Glavina: “There’s also a data protection angle here, Laura. What risks arise when employees use public AI tools to prepare their grievances?”

Laura Kennedy: “Yes, so one of the key concerns for many employers, not just in the grievance context, but just generally about employees using AI, is data protection. There are lots of public tools, and I think the concern would be uploading confidential, or commercially sensitive, information into these tools and so it's helpful if employers have guidance policies that sets, particularly for the tools that they do provide, what can and what cannot be shared on these because clearly there's a risk that if information gets into these public tools, it presents a reputational risk and trust issues if that data leaks. Aside from the data protection risks, I think there are other risks and that AI-generated grievances can appear more hostile. AI can amplify these emotions and make them appear more adversarial than potentially they are. AI can also give advice, and that can give this sense that there's a stronger claim than potentially there is and, again, all of that is just getting away from the crux, which is, what are the issues and how can an employer investigate and properly respond to these? One of the things I do notice when you use AI is that when you put information into it, it can repeat back the words that you use and so almost telling you what perhaps you'd like to hear in some scenarios and that can obviously present its challenges when you're discussing the grievance with the colleague.”

People Management has produced two article recently on this subject which you might like to read. They are: ‘Rising number of workers turn to AI to draft grievances, lawyers warn,’ and ‘How to survive the new world of AI-assisted conflict.’ We’ve included links to both of them in the transcript of this programme for you.

- Link to People Management article: ‘Rising number of workers turn to AI to draft grievances, lawyers warn’

- Link to People Management article: ‘How to survive the new world of AI-assisted conflict’