People and Culture Shared Interest Group

Nowadays, a lot of employees are knowingly or unknowingly training AI bots as part of their regular jobs without being compensated for it. Once these bots are trained, companies will start reducing the number of people required to do that job.

In the absence of any laws that protect these employees, what responsibility do organizations have to make this arrangement fair?

Should companies be more transparent about how employee knowledge is being used?

Should they be investing more heavily in reskilling and career transition support?

Should they be sharing productivity gains with employees in some way?

Should they be redefining jobs instead of simply reducing headcount?

Curious to hear different perspectives from this community.

Hi Izz, 
This is an interesting contemporary topic in most of the workplaces. I would like to share some examples from mine too. We motivate employees to look at AI as an enabler than a threat to their job. Everyone is given a target to use AI innovatively either for process optimization or quality enhancements of the work they do. One of the parameters in measuring performance is "ROI of AI", in which we ask the employees whom a business/enterprise license is allocated as to the # of chatbots they prepared, workflows that they have automated or agents that are set up to conduct routine processes. This way they feel empowered that their job is now redefined for good and the company focuses on more growth and profitability as the time taken otherwise can now be used for more productive things.  

Thanks Akhil for sharing your experience! It is helpful.

However it does still make me wonder that the overall number of jobs will be cut drastically if we continue training bots at the current pace, which is also fueling the concern that income inequality is going to increase over time. 

A recent incident that is making the news and is relevant: "South Korea should pay all citizens a share of AI profits, a top policymaker has urged, as a labour dispute threatens to disrupt production at Samsung Electronics' chip division."

You can read more on this link: South Korea floats 'citizen dividend' using AI profits | The Straits Times

Organizations have a responsibility to treat this as more than a technology efficiency project. If employees' knowledge, judgment, and workflows are being used to train or improve AI systems, there should be transparency, consent where appropriate, and a fair benefit-sharing mindset.

At minimum, companies should clearly explain how employee input is being used, what risks exist for affected roles, and how the organization plans to support people through the transition. Reskilling should not be an afterthought; it should be part of the AI implementation plan from day one.

I also think companies should focus first on job redesign, not just headcount reduction. AI should remove repetitive work and allow employees to move into higher-value tasks. When productivity gains are significant, sharing some of those gains through bonuses, training budgets, internal mobility opportunities, or reduced workload would make the arrangement much fairer.

Without that, employees may feel they are helping build the very systems that replace them, which creates a serious trust problem.

well said!