Fair Work
The Fair Work Act, the FWC, and AI in employment: performance management, monitoring, and the guardrails that keep AI use lawful.
11 articles
Articles about Fair Work
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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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The Fair Work Commission's draft guidance on generative AI sets three rules for anyone lodging a document: disclose the AI use, verify every fact and citation against an authoritative source, and never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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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 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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The Right to Disconnect Changes How Teams Should Configure AI Workflow Tools
Practical guidance for HR and managers on configuring AI workflow tools to respect the Fair Work right to disconnect, including audit checklists and sample policies.
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