Why we're writing about AI, and what's coming over the next few weeks

Why now

A quarter of UK businesses say they now use some form of AI technology, up 15 percentage points since the question was first asked in September 2023 (ONS, Business insights and impact on the UK economy, 8 January 2026). That is real movement, not a trend confined to large employers with a dedicated tech team.

Separate research from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology found that among businesses already using AI, average staff usage sits around 30%, and two thirds report giving AI output significant checking before relying on it, but that checking is usually one person deciding whether an answer looks right, not a documented company process (DSIT, AI Adoption Research, published 28 January 2026, updated 13 February 2026). Adoption has moved faster than the thinking around it.

The question we keep asking

Every piece in this series comes back to the same test. Before AI gets added to a process, is the task actually improved by it, or would a fast, reliable, transparent workflow do the job better? A lot of what gets called AI at work is really a straightforward lookup dressed up as something cleverer than it is.

The same test applies with more at stake to an employee's own HR record. Pay, health, disciplinary history, family circumstances: an HR file holds some of the most sensitive information a business keeps about a person. We think a business should be able to explain that record as clearly as any system claims to understand it, not hand more of it to a tool than it hands to the person it belongs to.

None of this is a case against AI. Used well, on the right task, it saves real time, and several pieces in this series say so directly. The point of the series is not to be for or against AI. It is to be plain about where it belongs.

The point of this series is not to be for or against AI. It is to be plain about where it belongs.

What the series covers

We are starting close to the ground, with the practical questions a manager actually has. One piece sets out what a sensible AI usage policy needs to say, in plain English, for a business where staff are probably already using AI tools with or without anyone's blessing. Another looks at the government's consultation on regulating workplace monitoring technology, and what a business should do while it is still open for responses.

From there we move into where the legal stakes are highest. One piece draws the line on the AI decisions that should never be made without a human, recruitment scoring, performance ratings, disciplinary outcomes and redundancy selection among them. A companion piece sets out what UK law already says about automated decision-making, including the right most people do not know they already have.

The practical end of it

Recruitment gets its own piece, since it is where AI tools have moved fastest and where the risk of getting it wrong is best documented, covering what genuinely helps a hiring process and what puts a business at risk. A separate piece looks at what actually happens when an AI tool gets something wrong about a real person, built around a case that went through a UK employment tribunal.

Two pieces take the employee's side of this deliberately. One looks at what employees are quietly worried about when AI shows up at work, using the workforce data rather than guessing. Another sets out why an employee's right to see their own HR record matters more, not less, as more of that record runs through software.

We close with the two most practical pieces: a plain look at where AI actually saves a business time, and where it just adds a step, and a short glossary that defines the terms that keep coming up, automation bias, hallucination, algorithmic bias and the rest, in language that does not assume you already know them.

How we are approaching it

Every figure, date and legal reference in this series is verified against a primary source before publication, UK gov.uk, legislation.gov.uk, the ICO, ACAS, ONS and CIPD among them, the same standard we hold every piece of Jamie HR content to. Where something is genuinely unsettled, a consultation still open, a provision not yet in force, we say so rather than presenting it as decided.

What we keep coming back to across the series is the record underneath any of this: accurate, transparent, and something a person can actually check for themselves. That is the thread running through every piece, and the series publishes over the coming weeks.