{"id":430722,"date":"2026-02-17T17:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/430722\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T17:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:02:10","slug":"hr-teams-are-drowning-in-slop-grievances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/430722\/","title":{"rendered":"HR teams are drowning in slop grievances"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Anna Bond, legal director in the employment team at Lewis Silkin, used to receive grievances that were typically the length of an email. Now, the complaints she sees can run to about 30 pages and span a wide range of historical issues, many of which are repeated. <\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect that AI is behind it,\u201d says Bond. The length of complaints about working conditions, colleagues and managers is the most pernicious problem. But some of the grievances also appeal to irrelevant laws \u2014 Canadian legislation, for example \u2014 or made-up legal precedents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always been a trend for employees to bring up a range of concerns, but in the last year, I\u2019ve seen more expansive ones.\u201d Describing the breadth as \u201ca smorgasbord\u201d, Bond says typical complaints about issues such as discrimination and bullying are now joined by \u201ca huge volume of information and historical detail\u201d about issues such as holiday pay or personal injury \u201cthat might not be relevant\u201d to the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Palmer, employment legal director at Addleshaw Goddard, has also noted a sharp rise in complaints, often AI-generated. \u201cEmployees like the sound of the report; it sounds formal, but it often doesn\u2019t reflect what happened. GenAI isn\u2019t designed to produce legal documents.\u201d\u00a0Sinead Casey, employment partner at Linklaters, describes such complaints as \u201cconfidently incompetent\u201d, superficially persuasive even to lawyers.<\/p>\n

Louise Rudd, an adviser to workplace mediation service Acas, says employees can draw unrealistic expectations about the strength of their claims, and \u201cin some cases, it appears that AI has provided incorrect or misleading information\u201d including non-existent precedents.\u00a0In others, individuals may ask for advice and will be given non-existent case law or incorrect interpretations by AI, which they may try to use to support their position against their employer.<\/p>\n

Of course, it is not just employees who are using AI but also lawyers, as a number of high-profile cases have shown. Last year, the UK High Court highlighted two cases in which lawyers were thought to have used AI incorporating \u201ca fake citation or quotation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lawyers point out there are positive effects of generative AI: it can help staff understand their rights and, when used appropriately, embolden them to launch legitimate complaints against their bosses. <\/p>\n

But the volume of AI-generated claims \u2014 and the additional time it takes to review their inaccuracies \u2014 may have a wider pernicious effect, slowing down responses from employers. Palmer says: \u201cThe complexity of the claims [is higher than] six or seven years ago.\u201d In part, he attributes this to AI, which may also be affecting an already stretched employment tribunal system. <\/p>\n

Ministry of Justice figures showed new employment tribunal cases brought by individuals increased by 33 per cent in the three months to September, while concluded cases decreased by 10 per cent, compared with a year earlier. The government expects cases to increase, due to the new Employment Rights Act.<\/p>\n

Roy Magara, founder of employment specialists Magara Law, says this means \u201clonger pleadings, wider issues being advanced and more complex case management demands landing in a system that is already operating at full stretch\u201d. At scale, \u201ccases sit unresolved for longer, memories fade, certainty is lost and the effectiveness of the tribunal process itself is undermined\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\"Montage<\/a><\/p>\n

The use of public AI tools to process confidential information also presents data protection issues, says Casey. \u201cEmployers should make sure their AI-usage policies are well drafted and set clear expectations for employees on what information should and should not be used on public tools.\u201d She also suggests employers train managers and HR to spot AI-generated grievances to avoid becoming overwhelmed by lengthy, irrelevant, or overly legalistic arguments.<\/p>\n

To really get ahead of slop grievances, however, employers should intervene in problems before employees start considering an AI complaint. \u201cLine managers should consider speaking with the employee, ideally face to face, as soon as possible, to understand the core complaints in the employee\u2019s own words rather than responding point by point to the lengthy arguments put forward in writing,\u201d Casey says. \u201cThe employer could then summarise these back to the employee in writing\u201d to focus complaints on substantive issues.<\/p>\n

Face-to-face conversations can set the scene for a satisfactory resolution for everyone. \u201cThis part of the process is often overlooked and many employees jump straight to a formal process. It may be something that employers want to encourage or promote more within their businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

And employees? \u201cLook at facts, and review them, to make sure your complaint reflects what you truly intend,\u201d Palmer advises. \u201cIt\u2019s a legitimate use of the software, it\u2019s just not how we\u2019re seeing it used in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-430722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}