For many HR professionals, a familiar pattern is beginning to emerge.
An employee facing a performance management process declines a meeting and instead sends a detailed written response. A grievance that might once have been discussed over the course of a couple of meetings becomes a chain of lengthy correspondence stretching over weeks. A redundancy consultation generates multiple rounds of written questions, requests for clarification and detailed submissions.
The immediate assumption is often that employees, particularly younger employees, are simply more comfortable communicating through written channels than previous generations. However, that explanation no longer tells the whole story. Increasingly, HR teams are encountering something different: the impact of artificial intelligence on workplace processes.
The AI Elephant in the Room
A few years ago, producing a detailed six-page response to a performance management invitation would have required a significant investment of time and effort.
Today, employees can generate detailed, professional-sounding correspondence in minutes. They can draft rebuttals, formulate extensive lists of questions, challenge procedural decisions and request further information almost instantaneously.
This is not necessarily because employees are becoming more adversarial. Nor is it necessarily evidence of a reluctance to engage face-to-face. Rather, AI has fundamentally changed the economics of workplace correspondence.
The result is that HR professionals are increasingly finding themselves engaged in lengthy written exchanges that may never have arisen before the widespread availability of generative AI tools. Indeed, the prospect of inflicting those exchanges is increasingly being used as leverage to dissuade and disrupt companies from commencing or progressing these processes.
A Process That Can Take on a Life of Its Own
Many HR professionals will recognise the experience; a redundancy consultation begins with a straightforward proposal, but within days, a multi-page set of questions arrives. Detailed responses are prepared, but follow-up questions then arrive the next day. Those responses generate additional observations, comments and requests for clarification.
At each stage, the process appears reasonable viewed in isolation. Employees are entitled to ask questions and employers should respond appropriately. The challenge is that AI enables these exchanges to continue almost indefinitely.
HR teams may feel as though they are participating in a perpetual written dialogue where each answer simply generates a new set of questions and in some cases, the correspondence itself begins to dominate the process.
Consultation is a Conversation, Not a Correspondence Exercise
Most HR procedures were never intended to operate exclusively through written communications. Whether dealing with a grievance, a performance issue or a redundancy situation, the underlying purpose is typically to facilitate meaningful engagement and dialogue.
Meetings allow:
- Questions to be answered immediately
- Misunderstandings to be clarified
- Positions to be tested and explored
- Practical solutions to be identified
- Processes to move forward efficiently
A 30-minute meeting can often resolve issues that would otherwise require dozens of emails.
That does not mean written communications have no place. Written records remain critically important, however, a process that becomes entirely correspondence-driven can lose sight of its original purpose.
The Hidden Cost for Organisations
The proliferation of AI-generated correspondence creates challenges that extend beyond HR departments. Managers can become reluctant participants in lengthy written debates. External advisers may be required to review substantial volumes of correspondence. Decision-making can slow considerably as organisations attempt to respond comprehensively to every point raised.
The result can be:
- Delayed outcomes
- Increased management time
- Higher advisory costs
- Greater stress for those involved in the process
- Reduced focus on practical resolution
More communication does not always lead to greater understanding.
An Evolving Challenge for HR Professionals
Rather than viewing this trend as a generational issue, HR leaders need to start viewing it as a technological one.
Generative AI has changed how people communicate. It has dramatically reduced the effort required to produce detailed workplace correspondence and has made it easier than ever to challenge, question and respond to employer decisions in writing. None of this is inherently negative. Employees should have opportunities to ask questions, raise concerns and have their voices heard.
Workplace procedures are precepts not prerequisites. Even though considerable focus is placed on procedural fairness in Ireland, it is simply not the case – and has never been the case – that it is employees, not employers, who can dictate the terms of engagement.
Operating within an overall framework of reasonableness and natural justice, which should be encapsulated in a company policy, employers are generally free to determine the mechanics on which internal company procedures operate.
Can Employees Insist on Written Communications?
Many HR professionals worry that requiring an employee to attend meetings may appear unreasonable if the employee has requested that all communication take place in writing.
In most situations, however, employers are perfectly entitled to establish reasonable procedures and require meaningful participation in those procedures. Of course, flexibility may be required in particular circumstances, including where medical conditions, disabilities or other legitimate considerations affect how an employee communicates.
However, absent exceptional circumstances, there will often be legitimate reasons for an employer to insist that at least some elements of a process take place through meetings, whether in person or remotely.
The key objective is to ensure a fair process, not necessarily a written-only one. The key risk to avoid is the creation of parallel written process that stymies the progress of the underlying process.
Can Employees Insist on Responses to Every Query?
A related challenge for HR professionals is the growing expectation that every question raised during a process must receive a detailed written response. The challenge is amplified by AI. A manager might spend an hour carefully answering a detailed list of questions, only to receive an even longer set of follow-up queries the next day. Often, these are not entirely new issues but different versions of points that have already been covered. At some stage, a process can start to feel less like a consultation and more like an endless email chain.
However, the reality is that employees have never had an entitlement to full disclosure from their employer on all and any matters of the employee’s choosing. This does not change merely because the questions are put in an email.
While employers should engage meaningfully with employees’ concerns that are relevant to the issue at hand and provide sufficient information to enable informed participation, fairness does not require an employer to enter an endless cycle of questions and answers.
In practice, there will often come a point where the key issues have been adequately addressed and further queries simply revisit points that have already been explained or generate increasingly marginal requests for additional information. This can be particularly challenging in the age of AI, where new questions can be generated almost instantly and in significant volume.
HR professionals should remember that the purpose of a redundancy consultation, grievance process or performance management procedure is to facilitate meaningful engagement, not to create an unlimited correspondence exercise.
The test is generally one of reasonableness: has the employee been given sufficient information and a genuine opportunity to understand, challenge and respond to the employer’s position? If the answer is yes, employers should not feel obliged to continue responding indefinitely to every new iteration of essentially the same questions.
It may be the case that the employee simply does not agree with the answer, which is not the same as not being provided with an answer. In such a situation, it may be appropriate to explain that the issues have been addressed, to acknowledge that the employee may disagree, and to then invite the employee to raise any genuinely new matters at a meeting and move the process forward.
Practical Steps for HR
As AI-generated workplace correspondence becomes more common, HR teams may wish to:
- Explain at the outset that meetings remain an integral part of the process
- Encourage employees to provide written questions in advance of meetings, but on the understanding that responses will be provided at the meeting, not in advance, and certainly not as a precondition to the employee attending the meeting
- Use meetings to address themes rather than exchanging multiple rounds of correspondence
- Confirm key points and outcomes in writing afterwards
- Set reasonable expectations regarding response times and further submissions
- Keep the focus on progressing the process rather than continuously expanding the debate
From a process and policy perspective, HR teams may also wish to consider including some or all of the following in their workplace policies:
- A prohibition on employees using Company information in AI tools without prior company approval
- An entitlement to set reasonable limits on workplace process submissions, including deadlines, page limits and the consolidation of questions or comments
- A requirement for employees to ensure that any material submitted during a workplace process is accurate, relevant and appropriate, whether or not AI has been used to prepare it
Conclusion
The growing preference for written engagement in workplace procedures is often attributed to changing communication styles or generational differences. While those factors may play a role, AI is likely to be a much more significant driver.
For HR professionals, the challenge is not that employees are communicating too little, it is that technology now enables almost limitless communication at minimal cost.
The solution is unlikely to be resisting written communication altogether. Instead, organisations should focus on maintaining an appropriate balance between written records and meaningful discussion.
