Articles
People & Culture, with AI in the loop
An Investigation Chronology Skill File With Fairness Built In
Workplace investigations are where sloppy AI use does real damage, and where a disciplined skill file earns its keep. This one gives the AI a structure-only role: it builds the chronology and the allegation-evidence map from de-identified material, tracks procedural fairness checkpoints and flags gaps. It never makes findings. Plus the three advanced habits: test on a fictional matter, version after every matter, write the handover contract.
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A Union Official Will Ask to Inspect Your Algorithm
New South Wales has legislated a power for WHS entry permit holders to require a business to provide reasonable assistance to access and inspect a digital work system. It has not started yet, because SafeWork NSW must publish guidelines first. That gap is the only preparation window HR is going to get, and the work it calls for is documentation, not defence.
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When a System Auto-Triggers a Performance Improvement Plan
SAP SuccessFactors now ships a business rule that can launch a performance improvement plan on its own when a rating drops. A machine that opens a PIP with no human decision is an adverse action and procedural fairness risk under the Fair Work Act. Here is the rule HR needs before enabling it: a system can flag, only a person can trigger.
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An HR Skill File That Answers From Your Policies, Not the Internet
HR answers the same questions every week, and generic AI answers them from the internet, confidently wrong about your workplace. Part 2 of The Skill File Series ships a complete policy-grounded query skill file that forces answers from your own policy set, cites the clause, quotes the operative words and escalates everything else to a named human.
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AI Did Not Send Those Emails. Your Employee Did.
A Fair Work Commission decision now final on appeal considered whether an employee's use of an AI language model mitigated the conduct that got him dismissed. It did not. The Deputy President found the employee took responsibility for what was sent, so the tool explained nothing. That is the clearest signal yet that AI creates no new category of misconduct and no new defence, and it puts the weight back on whether your AI policy states a conduct standard at all.
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Your Employee Data Is Exempt. That Is Not Permission.
Most Australian private sector employers are exempt from the Australian Privacy Principles when they handle their own employee records. HR teams read that as headroom for AI. It is not headroom, it is the absence of a floor, and the exemption's edges are exactly where AI workflows leak. Here is what section 7B(3) actually covers, where it stops, and the standard to put in its place.
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Your HRIS Now Lets Anyone Build an Agent
Workday's DevCon launch moved AI agent-building inside the HR system, and general-purpose workspaces like ChatGPT Enterprise and Claude Cowork put the same power in anyone's hands without the built-in guardrails. Here is the governance an HR team needs before it builds an agent that touches employee data: who may build, the go-live gate, and the Australian privacy and Fair Work rules that still apply.
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Your Recruiter Is Now an Agent, Not a Search Box
LinkedIn's recruiting agent now reaches roughly $450 million in annualised revenue, and its AI screening interview is in testing, which means a growing share of Australian candidates are assessed by an audio or video agent before a human ever sees them. Here is the governance answer HR needs before enabling one: fairness, candidate notice and the record you must be able to produce.
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Your AI Rollout Triggers a Clause You Already Signed
HR teams are rolling out AI tools as a productivity uplift and skipping consultation, reasoning that nobody is losing a job so no duty arises. The clause says otherwise. The trigger is a major change to technology likely to have a significant effect, and significant effect expressly includes a major change to the skills required and the need to retrain. Here is the trigger test to run before go-live.
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AI Decides Who Sees Your Job Ad. That Is a Hiring Decision.
Every hiring tool you govern kicks in after someone applies. The bias that decides who even sees the job sits upstream, in the algorithm that delivers the ad. Research shows job ads skew by gender and race even when the targeting is inclusive, and Australian law reaches discriminatory job advertising directly. Here is how HR takes back the top of the funnel.
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AI in Reference and Background Checks: Verify Facts, Not Character
AI is arriving in the verification stage of hiring: tools that draft reference questions, summarise calls, scrape digital footprints and score candidates. The admin is worth automating; the judgement, the collection decisions and the fairness are not. Here is the line, a five-step process that holds it, and two ready prompts.
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When the Other Side's AI Invents the Law
Self-represented workers are lodging Fair Work claims built on AI-invented cases and award clauses. Two 2026 Commission decisions show the range of outcomes, from a forgiven concession to a costs application. Here is how a respondent spots a fabricated authority and raises it without ambushing an unrepresented person.
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AI Can Build the Redundancy. It Cannot Decide It
AI is inside Australian restructures twice: in the headlines and in the HR preparation. The law has moved the other way, with the Fair Work Act and the 2025 Helensburgh Coal ruling reserving the decision, the selection and the consultation for people. Here is the legal line, two reusable prompts, a worked example and the Monday setup.
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Every Application Now Reads Perfectly. Assess the Person.
Candidates now write their applications with AI, so the polish and tailoring recruiters once read as effort no longer signal anything. More than a third of Australian hiring managers say AI-generated CVs make candidates harder to assess. Trying to detect the AI is a losing game. Here is how to redesign selection to measure what a person can actually do, and keep it fair.
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AI Can Draft the Warning. It Cannot Fake the Facts.
Managers are drafting warnings, improvement plans and review records with AI, and the Fair Work Commission is already seeing where that goes wrong. An unfair-dismissal claim turns on real facts and a fair process, and a model supplies neither. Here is a workflow that lets AI carry the writing while the manager keeps the facts, the fairness and the decision.
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The Fair Work Commission's Three Rules for AI in a Case
The Fair Work Commission's draft guidance on generative AI sets three rules for anyone lodging a document: disclose the AI use, verify every fact and citation against an authoritative source, and never let AI write a witness statement. A June law change makes getting this right more urgent, not less. Here is the pre-filing discipline for HR and ER teams.
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Use AI to Build Practice Simulations, Not to Award the Pass
HR teams can use an approved AI assistant to build fictional role-plays, reveal information in stages, vary the difficulty and draft coaching questions. What AI must never do is decide whether an employee passed, is competent or faces an employment consequence. Here is the six-step workflow, the standards to write first, and the boundary that keeps assessment human.
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AI Can Map a Flexible Work Request. It Cannot Decide Reasonableness
AI can structure a flexible work request: the deadline, the missing facts, the consultation agenda, the workable alternatives and a draft response built from verified inputs. It cannot decide eligibility under section 65 or reasonableness under section 65A of the Fair Work Act. Here is the case-map workflow that keeps the judgement human.
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AI Can Read the Award. It Cannot Set the Pay.
Award rates rise on 1 July 2026 and almost anyone can now paste a clause into an AI tool and get a confident answer. AI can help you read the award. It can never set the pay, and the law holds a person accountable for the figure.
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AI Note-Takers in HR Meetings: Consent Before the Transcript
AI meeting assistants now record HR's most sensitive conversations by default, and often nobody in the room agreed to it. Here is a consent-and-records protocol that keeps the time savings without manufacturing your next privacy breach.
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AI Can Analyse Your Engagement Survey Without Surveilling Your People
AI can read every free-text comment in your engagement survey and turn a thousand of them into themes in minutes. Done well, it finally puts that feedback to use. Done badly, it turns a survey into surveillance. Here is the line, and a workflow that stays on the right side of it.
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AI in Workplace Investigations: Organise the File, Not the Finding
AI can compress the administrative weight of a workplace investigation: planning, transcribing, organising evidence, drafting the framework. It cannot assess credibility, weigh the evidence or make the finding. Here is how to use it without compromising procedural fairness.
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AI Hiring and Performance Tools Under Australia's Positive Duty: What HR Must Control
AI screening, ranking and performance tools sit squarely inside the positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act, the Fair Work Act and the Privacy Act. Here is the control framework Australian HR teams need before they deploy.
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AI Worker Monitoring in Australia: What HR Can and Cannot Do
A practitioner guide for Australian HR teams on the privacy, surveillance, Fair Work and WHS rules that govern AI monitoring of workers, including the new automated decision-making transparency duty from 10 December 2026.
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AI-Assisted Onboarding: A 90-Day Plan That Keeps the Human In
Onboarding is where unmanaged AI does the quietest damage, because a new starter cannot tell a confident wrong answer from a right one. Here is a 90-day pattern, with a ready-to-build Onboarding Assistant project, where AI drafts and organises and people decide and connect.
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