As a cost and time-saving measure, HR professionals are increasingly using AI to create employment documents such as handbooks, offer letters, and separation agreements.
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EEarlier this year, Carly Holm, CEO of HR consultancy Humani, received a call from a New York-based client. One employee alleged workplace harassment against another employee, and the situation quickly escalated. But when Holm asked clients for copies of their employee handbooks as part of a routine compliance check, they stumbled. “They kind of looked embarrassed and said, 'Okay, this is it, ChatGPT wrote it,'” Holm said. forbys.
This came as no surprise to Holm, who has reviewed AI-generated policies for dozens of clients. However, there was a big problem in this case. The AI-generated handbook contained no anti-harassment policy at all.
“If a workplace does not have appropriate policies in place, such as a zero-tolerance policy for things like sexual harassment and workplace violence, the investigation will be directed at the employer and there will be consequences,” she said. “Then they realized, 'Oh, we should have hired an expert to write these policies the right way.'”
Interviews with four HR and payroll service providers show that the most important and often legally binding employment documents, from company handbooks and workplace policies to contracts such as offer letters and separation forms, are We found that companies are increasingly using AI. And in some cases, these documents, created using AI tools such as ChatGPT, miss important clauses and critical issues that put employers at significant legal and financial risk. said an HR consultant who worked directly with these companies. Forbes.
“They looked at the handbook again, and there was a section on overtime, but it was blank.”
Some companies hire human resources experts to review AI-generated policies before publishing them, while others seek professional help after issues arise. For example, a California-based company with 200 employees used AI to create an internal handbook, said Daniel Grace, director at global HR consulting firm Iris. forbes. However, after distributing it throughout the company, managers discovered that it did not include an overtime policy, which is a legal requirement in the state. The company was hit with a huge unexpected wage bill after an employee worked several hours of overtime.
“They looked at the handbook again and there was a section on overtime, but it was blank,” Grace said.
As another example, Grace said that in the UK, HR teams used Microsoft Bing's AI CoPilot to create severance agreements. A legally binding document, which omitted important information, was then sent to the employee's attorney.
“Their lawyers basically threw it out the window and said this is useless. It did a lot of damage to their own negotiations and ended up having to pay a higher settlement. '' Grace said.
Handbooks and workplace policies are often hundreds of pages long. Each of these comprehensive documents is tailored to reflect a company's culture and incorporates local laws that uniquely apply to a company's employees. But while AI tools can help create first drafts of these documents in seconds, the underlying training datasets are often outdated when it comes to ever-evolving labor laws, says Ben Horton, vice president of engineering at Iris. says Mr. Additionally, there are a number of privacy concerns. When sensitive corporate data is entered into the free version of his ChatGPT and its ilk, it can be used to train AI models or leaked to the public.
said Paul Cortisos, CEO of HRSoul, a Florida-based HR consultancy. forbes Relying too much on AI for these policies could have troubling ramifications.he said forbes About the remote SaaS company that hired him after the employee filed an internal complaint. The company's handbook, created with the help of ChatGPT, allotted five days of paid leave based on the bereavement policy, but in the state in which the employee lived, workers could receive up to 10 days of paid leave. had the right to obtain.
“That was kind of a sore spot for them to say, 'Oh, look, maybe we need to bring in someone who really knows what they're doing,'” Cortissos said. said, adding that his company had to start over. Since then, there have been a number of AI-generated employee handbooks.
While AI has been applied to a variety of HR tasks, including writing job descriptions, finding talent, screening and interviewing candidates, and allocating bonuses, it is still underutilized to create accurate corporate policies. It reveals which companies are using AI to address critical problems. Legal and economic fallout.
“Let's be honest, people are using artificial intelligence tools to speed things up…and they really shouldn't…there are serious problems with these,” Grace said. . “They're creating these documents. They're publishing them without anyone proofreading them, and they're causing more problems than if they had taken the time to write a good handbook in the first place.”
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