Using Using AI responsibly in

people management
What use of artificial intelligence is ‘acceptable’ in people
management and how can this be done responsibly?

BY Hayfa Mohdzaini, Senior Research Adviser

27 JANUARY 2023
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Did you know that artificial intelligence (AI) may be present in HR

information systems (HRIS)? Or that it may be a background
assistant in spreadsheet software, learning experience platforms,
search engines or GPS navigation? Over half of the 814 UK bosses
we surveyed (54.3%) didn’t know or think that AI could be present
in at least one of these. Of those who thought AI could be present,
fewer thought that it could be found in an HRIS and spreadsheet
software compared to search engines (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Respondents who said AI can be present in these

technologies

What AI is and how it manifests

What AI is and how it manifests AI is the automation of cognition.

According to Gartner, AI uses advanced analytical techniques like
machine learning to interpret events, to support and automate
decisions, and to take actions. However, people don’t always
agree with such a broad view of what AI includes, and
expectations of AI’s capabilities are also changing as technology
advances.
The way AI manifests can be illustrated through our examples
from Figure 1. For instance, a search engine can use AI to tailor
search results based on our past searches. A GPS navigation
system can incorporate live traffic updates to avoid suggesting
busy routes. By capturing and analysing data, a learning
experience platform can recommend courses based on an
individual’s learning interests and what other people with similar
interests have done. Some spreadsheet software can analyse a
data table in just a few clicks and you can let it know which
automatically generated charts were useful for your report.
Meanwhile, some modern HRIS can proactively highlight key
insights from your people data, going beyond the key performance
indicators on your people analytics dashboard. All these are
examples of specific cognitive tasks that have been automated –
examples of AI in action.

Acceptable uses of AI in people management

Where AI impacts people and particularly when it comes to the

sphere of people management, it’s important to consider what
uses are acceptable, and how to increase awareness of AI’s
potential use and safeguard against misuse.

From our survey, we found that bosses were uncomfortable with

letting AI do tasks that might disadvantage people’s job prospects
and risk the organisation’s reputation. The greater the negative
impact, the more uncomfortable bosses were with delegating the
task to AI. Indeed, where automated decisions have significant
effects on individuals, the UK General Data Protection
Regulation limits its use to certain scenarios and allows affected
individuals to challenge those decisions. So bosses’ discomfort
about certain AI uses could also stem from concern around
regulatory compliance.

Among the examples of people management activities in Figure 2,

dismissing underperforming employees was most cited as
something bosses were uncomfortable with letting AI do, whether
the performance criteria were clear (net 87.1%) or not (net 84.1%).
In fact, most said they were extremely uncomfortable with letting
AI do this (see dark purple bars in Figure 2).
And what about letting AI identify underperforming employees?
Bosses’ opinions were split where performance criteria were clear,
with just over half saying they were uncomfortable with letting AI
identify underperformers (net 54.1%). Where performance criteria
were unclear, more bosses were uncomfortable with letting AI do
this (net 77.3%). Undoubtedly, it’s unhelpful to give the task to AI if
there aren’t clear criteria to let it to do so accurately.

Figure 2: How comfortable are you with letting AI do the following?

Many bosses were also uncomfortable with using AI for

shortlisting interview candidates (net 67.7%). In contrast, only a
minority of bosses were uncomfortable with using AI to schedule
work shifts (net 31.6%). While allocated shifts may impact
individual earnings, fewer said they were uncomfortable with
letting AI do this compared to using AI to shortlist candidates, or
to identify or dismiss underperformers. Even fewer had a problem
with using AI to show the optimal route for picking items in a
warehouse (net 12.7%). There, AI was a definite tool to improve
performance.

AI bias in recruitment

Focusing on AI use to mitigate bias in recruitment, 31.2% of

respondents felt AI had the same level of bias as a person (Figure
3) – after all, people created AI and people have biases. A similar
proportion thought that AI could actually increase bias (30.2%),
but more bosses were optimistic that AI could reduce it (38.6%).

Figure 3: Thinking about the use of AI in the recruitment process

to assess or shortlist candidates, which of the following is closer
to your view?

AI’s strength is that it can scale up to do the same task quickly.

But both the benefits and drawbacks would be amplified if done at
a large scale. Getting AI to do high volume tasks can be effective
if the risks are contained. Less so if there are few jobs to fill, few
applicants to assess or if there aren’t clear candidate
specifications to address.

Suppose you want to increase the diversity of your shortlist and

have thousands of applications to sift. You can use AI to help by
providing clear and inclusive (eg proactively including
underrepresented groups) candidate specifications and ‘training’
it. Over time, the AI model can be audited and improved, to
ultimately reduce bias. Of course, it’s possible to accidentally
introduce bias, so a wide group of people should be involved. This
should include domain experts who know the task well and how
biases could be mitigated, along with the AI experts who
developed the solution. In particular, involve those from
underrepresented groups who have lived experience of bias. A
poorly designed AI solution would only amplify biases.

Mitigating bias when shortlisting candidates

In terms of understanding how to mitigate bias in the process,

approximately six in ten bosses (58.4%) said they were clear about
this, but fewer than one in ten said they were extremely clear
(Figure 4).

Figure 4: How clear are you about mitigating bias when using AI to
shortlist candidates?

To mitigate bias when using AI to shortlist candidates, some

suggested:

 Keeping people in charge. “We would never solely rely on AI

for any decision. All decisions would be reviewed.”

 Rigorous training for AI. “Long bedding in period… compare

the shortlist proposed by AI [with those generated
independently]… Discrepancies [and] trends indicating bias
would be investigated before placing any reliance on AI”.

 Getting better at identifying and reducing your own biases,

so you can train AI to do the same. “If you are comfortable
 with reducing bias you will be more effective at programming
the bias out.”

 Auditing AI. “Audit process to check performing to

parameters.” To supplement your equality impact
assessments of AI, there are auditing tools that can do some
of the audits if you have people with the technical know-how
to use them. Table 4 of the Institute for the Future of Work
(IFOW) report Artificial intelligence in hiring: Assessing
impacts on equality reviews 17 free open-source and
commercial auditing tools. Always assess impact with target
groups who are underrepresented and who have experienced
disadvantage and discrimination.

 Use AI only if it makes sense, otherwise avoid! For example,

don’t use AI for sifting applications if you need to spend a lot
of effort training AI but receive few applications, or where
“selection requires nuanced judgement that cannot be
reduced to a formula that AI requires”.

A further suggestion was to anonymise applications. However,

anonymous applications are not always helpful if AI is doing the
shortlisting, even though it’s been shown to improve candidate
diversity when people do the process. This is because removing
personal details like gender and ethnicity can distort an AI model,
making it less accurate and fair (see ‘anti-classification’ on p 14 of
the IFOW report). For example, Figure 2 of this academic
blog shows how excluding ethnicity from the AI model could
result in many high-performing ethnic minority candidates not
being hired. Rather, a well-designed AI model might even consider
the intersectionality of different personal characteristics, for
example, in those who may experience bias on multiple levels
because of their ethnicity, gender and disability.

Another point worth noting is that bias and adverse impact aren’t
the same thing, even though they may be used interchangeably.
We can have an unbiased AI solution that adversely impacts
people from underrepresented groups. This is why if we want to
increase diversity, we also need to think about where structural
discrimination can hide outside and inside the organisation. A
lack of diversity in frontline employees, for example, might reflect
a lack of investment in public transport and residential
segregation. This insight might prompt you to advocate for better
public transport and community development activities.

Also think about how diversity intersects with the organisation’s

policies during the employee lifecycle. Perhaps your recruitment
initiative to increase diversity is successful but if the reward
policy values length of service over performance, your
organisation may not be able to retain its new recruits.

Using AI responsibly

More broadly, we also asked bosses to choose their top three

ways for ensuring AI is used responsibly at work. The pink lines in
Figure 5 highlight the aggregated top three choices from our
respondents (their first choice is three times the weight of their
third choice). Requiring employers to conduct impact assessments
before and after implementing AI is seen as important as
introducing regulation to ensure AI is trustworthy. This is closely
followed by requiring vendors to demonstrate that the AI in their
software is trustworthy.

Figure 5: Ways to ensure AI is used responsibly at work

If your organisation has invested or is thinking about investing in

AI, the CIPD’s Responsible investment in technology guide can
help. It sets out principles for ensuring that the technology
(including AI) benefits both the organisation and its people. It also
provides key questions to ask where the technology could
significantly impact how people do their work (Table 2 of
the guide).

Regarding equality impact assessments of AI specifically, the

approach is similar to an assessment for other initiatives. The
Equality and Human Rights Commission (GB)’s guide on AI in
public service provides checklists.

AI regulation and assurance is a developing area. The UK

Government for example, is taking a sector-based approach to
develop regulation and an ecosystem for assurance, engaging with
sectors including HR and recruitment, finance, and connected and
automated vehicles. This is one to watch or get involved in if
you’re in the UK. For developments on international legislation
that recognise the impact of AI in the workplace, take a look at
IFOW’s legislation tracker. At the time of writing, the AI
legislation mapped are those developed for the EU, US and
Canada.

n people management
What use of artificial intelligence is ‘acceptable’ in people
management and how can this be done responsibly?

Did you know that artificial intelligence (AI) may be present in HR

information systems (HRIS)? Or that it may be a background
assistant in spreadsheet software, learning experience platforms,
search engines or GPS navigation? Over half of the 814 UK bosses
we surveyed (54.3%) didn’t know or think that AI could be present
in at least one of these. Of those who thought AI could be present,
fewer thought that it could be found in an HRIS and spreadsheet
software compared to search engines (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Respondents who said AI can be present in these

technologies

What AI is and how it manifests

What AI is and how it manifests AI is the automation of cognition.

According to Gartner, AI uses advanced analytical techniques like
machine learning to interpret events, to support and automate
decisions, and to take actions. However, people don’t always
agree with such a broad view of what AI includes, and
expectations of AI’s capabilities are also changing as technology
advances.
The way AI manifests can be illustrated through our examples
from Figure 1. For instance, a search engine can use AI to tailor
search results based on our past searches. A GPS navigation
system can incorporate live traffic updates to avoid suggesting
busy routes. By capturing and analysing data, a learning
experience platform can recommend courses based on an
individual’s learning interests and what other people with similar
interests have done. Some spreadsheet software can analyse a
data table in just a few clicks and you can let it know which
automatically generated charts were useful for your report.
Meanwhile, some modern HRIS can proactively highlight key
insights from your people data, going beyond the key performance
indicators on your people analytics dashboard. All these are
examples of specific cognitive tasks that have been automated –
examples of AI in action.

Acceptable uses of AI in people management

Where AI impacts people and particularly when it comes to the

sphere of people management, it’s important to consider what
uses are acceptable, and how to increase awareness of AI’s
potential use and safeguard against misuse.

From our survey, we found that bosses were uncomfortable with

letting AI do tasks that might disadvantage people’s job prospects
and risk the organisation’s reputation. The greater the negative
impact, the more uncomfortable bosses were with delegating the
task to AI. Indeed, where automated decisions have significant
effects on individuals, the UK General Data Protection
Regulation limits its use to certain scenarios and allows affected
individuals to challenge those decisions. So bosses’ discomfort
about certain AI uses could also stem from concern around
regulatory compliance.

Among the examples of people management activities in Figure 2,

dismissing underperforming employees was most cited as
something bosses were uncomfortable with letting AI do, whether
the performance criteria were clear (net 87.1%) or not (net 84.1%).
In fact, most said they were extremely uncomfortable with letting
AI do this (see dark purple bars in Figure 2).
And what about letting AI identify underperforming employees?
Bosses’ opinions were split where performance criteria were clear,
with just over half saying they were uncomfortable with letting AI
identify underperformers (net 54.1%). Where performance criteria
were unclear, more bosses were uncomfortable with letting AI do
this (net 77.3%). Undoubtedly, it’s unhelpful to give the task to AI if
there aren’t clear criteria to let it to do so accurately.

Figure 2: How comfortable are you with letting AI do the following?

Many bosses were also uncomfortable with using AI for

shortlisting interview candidates (net 67.7%). In contrast, only a
minority of bosses were uncomfortable with using AI to schedule
work shifts (net 31.6%). While allocated shifts may impact
individual earnings, fewer said they were uncomfortable with
letting AI do this compared to using AI to shortlist candidates, or
to identify or dismiss underperformers. Even fewer had a problem
with using AI to show the optimal route for picking items in a
warehouse (net 12.7%). There, AI was a definite tool to improve
performance.

AI bias in recruitment

Focusing on AI use to mitigate bias in recruitment, 31.2% of

respondents felt AI had the same level of bias as a person (Figure
3) – after all, people created AI and people have biases. A similar
proportion thought that AI could actually increase bias (30.2%),
but more bosses were optimistic that AI could reduce it (38.6%).

Figure 3: Thinking about the use of AI in the recruitment process

to assess or shortlist candidates, which of the following is closer
to your view?

AI’s strength is that it can scale up to do the same task quickly.

But both the benefits and drawbacks would be amplified if done at
a large scale. Getting AI to do high volume tasks can be effective
if the risks are contained. Less so if there are few jobs to fill, few
applicants to assess or if there aren’t clear candidate
specifications to address.

Suppose you want to increase the diversity of your shortlist and

have thousands of applications to sift. You can use AI to help by
providing clear and inclusive (eg proactively including
underrepresented groups) candidate specifications and ‘training’
it. Over time, the AI model can be audited and improved, to
ultimately reduce bias. Of course, it’s possible to accidentally
introduce bias, so a wide group of people should be involved. This
should include domain experts who know the task well and how
biases could be mitigated, along with the AI experts who
developed the solution. In particular, involve those from
underrepresented groups who have lived experience of bias. A
poorly designed AI solution would only amplify biases.

Mitigating bias when shortlisting candidates

In terms of understanding how to mitigate bias in the process,

approximately six in ten bosses (58.4%) said they were clear about
this, but fewer than one in ten said they were extremely clear
(Figure 4).

Figure 4: How clear are you about mitigating bias when using AI to
shortlist candidates?

To mitigate bias when using AI to shortlist candidates, some

suggested:

 Keeping people in charge. “We would never solely rely on AI

for any decision. All decisions would be reviewed.”

 Rigorous training for AI. “Long bedding in period… compare

the shortlist proposed by AI [with those generated
independently]… Discrepancies [and] trends indicating bias
would be investigated before placing any reliance on AI”.

 Getting better at identifying and reducing your own biases,

so you can train AI to do the same. “If you are comfortable
 with reducing bias you will be more effective at programming
the bias out.”

 Auditing AI. “Audit process to check performing to

parameters.” To supplement your equality impact
assessments of AI, there are auditing tools that can do some
of the audits if you have people with the technical know-how
to use them. Table 4 of the Institute for the Future of Work
(IFOW) report Artificial intelligence in hiring: Assessing
impacts on equality reviews 17 free open-source and
commercial auditing tools. Always assess impact with target
groups who are underrepresented and who have experienced
disadvantage and discrimination.

 Use AI only if it makes sense, otherwise avoid! For example,

don’t use AI for sifting applications if you need to spend a lot
of effort training AI but receive few applications, or where
“selection requires nuanced judgement that cannot be
reduced to a formula that AI requires”.

A further suggestion was to anonymise applications. However,

anonymous applications are not always helpful if AI is doing the
shortlisting, even though it’s been shown to improve candidate
diversity when people do the process. This is because removing
personal details like gender and ethnicity can distort an AI model,
making it less accurate and fair (see ‘anti-classification’ on p 14 of
the IFOW report). For example, Figure 2 of this academic
blog shows how excluding ethnicity from the AI model could
result in many high-performing ethnic minority candidates not
being hired. Rather, a well-designed AI model might even consider
the intersectionality of different personal characteristics, for
example, in those who may experience bias on multiple levels
because of their ethnicity, gender and disability.

Another point worth noting is that bias and adverse impact aren’t
the same thing, even though they may be used interchangeably.
We can have an unbiased AI solution that adversely impacts
people from underrepresented groups. This is why if we want to
increase diversity, we also need to think about where structural
discrimination can hide outside and inside the organisation. A
lack of diversity in frontline employees, for example, might reflect
a lack of investment in public transport and residential
segregation. This insight might prompt you to advocate for better
public transport and community development activities.

Also think about how diversity intersects with the organisation’s

policies during the employee lifecycle. Perhaps your recruitment
initiative to increase diversity is successful but if the reward
policy values length of service over performance, your
organisation may not be able to retain its new recruits.

Using AI responsibly

More broadly, we also asked bosses to choose their top three

ways for ensuring AI is used responsibly at work. The pink lines in
Figure 5 highlight the aggregated top three choices from our
respondents (their first choice is three times the weight of their
third choice). Requiring employers to conduct impact assessments
before and after implementing AI is seen as important as
introducing regulation to ensure AI is trustworthy. This is closely
followed by requiring vendors to demonstrate that the AI in their
software is trustworthy.

Figure 5: Ways to ensure AI is used responsibly at work

If your organisation has invested or is thinking about investing in

AI, the CIPD’s Responsible investment in technology guide can
help. It sets out principles for ensuring that the technology
(including AI) benefits both the organisation and its people. It also
provides key questions to ask where the technology could
significantly impact how people do their work (Table 2 of
the guide).

Regarding equality impact assessments of AI specifically, the

approach is similar to an assessment for other initiatives. The
Equality and Human Rights Commission (GB)’s guide on AI in
public service provides checklists.

AI regulation and assurance is a developing area. The UK

Government for example, is taking a sector-based approach to
develop regulation and an ecosystem for assurance, engaging with
sectors including HR and recruitment, finance, and connected and
automated vehicles. This is one to watch or get involved in if
you’re in the UK. For developments on international legislation
that recognise the impact of AI in the workplace, take a look at
IFOW’s legislation tracker. At the time of writing, the AI
legislation mapped are those developed for the EU, US and
Canada.