Chances are, you might have heard of Artificial Intelligence.
It’s been a lot in the media recently, with thousands of words written about how it’s going to take all the white-collar jobs away.
I’m a big fan of tech (anything that’ll do the same job better or faster is worth exploring), so I thought I’d have a go, just to see whether I need to go straight to night school to retrain as something AI won’t usurp.
I put into the search box, “When can I give a written warning in the UK?”.
AI’s answer:
“In the UK, an employer can give a written warning to an employee for a variety of reasons, such as poor performance, misconduct, or attendance issues. However, before giving a written warning, employers should follow a fair and reasonable disciplinary procedure.”
Then it proceeded to give me an overview of the ACAS code of practice on disciplinary procedures.
It didn’t tell me any of the risks, alternatives or details of the process.
It didn’t say that for a “reasonable process”, you’re required to have different people running each meeting, at every stage.
It didn’t say that if they have less than two years’ service (at the moment!), you don’t have to follow a process and could probably still terminate.
It didn’t say that if they have a protected characteristic, you’d better have really good objective evidence for giving a warning to avoid a discrimination claim.
And it didn’t suggest that a settlement agreement might be a better way to go, depending on the offence, length of service and seniority.
Which is just like my maths teacher used to say about calculators – you have to know what the right answer is to know whether the calculator is giving you the correct one.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Technology is good, and will likely get better, but there is currently nothing better than another human asking, “Talk me through why you want to do this”, and making sure that you and your organisation are protected.
