HR Director Magazine recently reported that UK employment tribunals are straining under a 26% increase in outstanding cases over the past year, reaching a new record high of more than half a million unresolved claims.
Employees’ use of generative AI tools is contributing significantly to this spike, flooding HR inboxes with lengthy, complex, and often inaccurate submissions, and requiring more time and attention from HR and Legal to triage, interpret and respond. In many organisations, this is also resulting in more cases being raised earlier and without sufficient evidence, increasing the volume of low‑quality issues that HR and ER need to interpret before any meaningful resolution can begin.
In this blog, we look at how HR can use AI to strike back against AI-generated tribunal claims by strengthening core processes, reducing disputes, and mitigating organisational risk.
Here are our five top recommendations:
1. Use AI to anticipate and address potential hotspots before they become problems
Always-on, AI-driven sentiment analysis can detect signals from across the organisation, scraping data from diverse sources, including pulse surveys, internal chat sites, engagement platforms and exit interviews, to detect emerging concerns or rising negative employee sentiment.
Sentiment analysis can also cluster individual concerns into themes, such as workload stress, poor managerial communication, change fatigue or lack of recognition, allowing HR and the Leadership team to identify root causes and intervene early with targeted actions, such as manager coaching, before they become formal grievances.
2. Improve the quality and consistency of HR documentation
HR can use AI to review and update case-related documentation and templates, such as letters, investigation notes, and communications, to ensure that they are clear and unambiguous. AI can also ensure that documentation is aligned with core processes, as well as flagging any missing procedural steps that could contribute to claims of unfairness.
3. Use AI to help manage HR’s casework burden
With waiting times for tribunal hearings of unfair dismissal claims now exceeding a year, HR teams are having to manage cases and documentation for longer, increasing their overall administrative burden.
Once again, AI can play a role, first in automatically triaging cases to prioritise those that require early human intervention to avoid escalation to tribunal. AI can also help summarise lengthy AI generated claims and highlight key themes and inconsistencies. AI is also adept at automating document sorting and redaction, allowing HR and Legal to focus on resolving claims rather than drowning in admin.
4. Strengthen AI governance and reduce risk
Claims that have been generated by public AI tools can often contain sensitive personal data which can raise confidentiality and GDPR concerns. HR can help maintain confidentiality of personal data through the use of approved, secure AI systems for internal processes, and ensuring that managers and employees are trained on the safe and responsible use of AI in their roles. Clear guidance on when AI should, and should not, be used to draft complaints also helps avoidable risk and improves the quality of information entering HR and ER processes.
5. Enhance employee understanding
Whilst AI is making it easier for employees to generate claims, many of these claims arise from misunderstandings of internal procedures or legal thresholds. HR can leverage AI to guide employees towards internal channels to seek resolution internally rather than escalating straight to a tribunal.
AI powered L&D modules or support tools that explain HR policies and processes, and employees’ rights in clear language can help channel employees along grievance pathways and direct them to the right support. This proactive intervention can prevent prematurely formal complaints and improves the overall ‘first time quality’ of issues reaching HR and ER, unnecessary investigation work and allowing HR and Legal to focus on faster resolution of genuine, legitimate concerns.
Final thoughts: strike back against AI generated tribunal claims
Generative AI is making it easier for employees to raise claims, adding to HR’s and Legal’s administrative burden, and creating a huge backlog for the UK’s employment tribunal system. HR can use AI to manage and respond to this spike in claims by anticipating potential hotspots, improving documentation, guiding employees towards early resolution to reduce the number of claims that ultimately go to tribunal and with it, organisational risk and cost.
AI should only ever be used to assist HR or Legal judgement rather than replace it, but through leveraging AI, HR can turn a growing challenge into an opportunity to proactively identify and address employee concerns, and improve efficiency, fairness, and trust across the organisation.
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