AI is helping workers research, build and articulate workplace complaints with legal precision – and employers are scrambling to keep up. Two HR leaders share tips to help HR protect their organisations.

The Fair Work Commission’s recent guidance on using AI to draft complaints confirmed what many employers already suspected: employees are increasingly using AI to navigate workplace law and build legal cases.

The guidance, which requires any employee submitting an FWC application to declare if their claim was AI-assisted, and to verify any information provided by AI prior to submission, may curb the volume of low-quality complaints to the commission.

However, AI use within the workplace is here to stay. And for employees who are dissatisfied or disgruntled, it remains a powerful tool for researching their rights, says Lisa Mannering FCPHR, employment lawyer and HR consultant at Langtree Legal and a member of AHRI’s ER/IR advisory panel.

“AI is increasingly being used to prepare complaints and draft letters, but it has also become a sounding board for employees who want to understand their rights and cross-check things HR might have told them.”

What once required significant time, money — and in some cases, an actual legal degree — can now be generated in minutes. This will inevitably bring a rise in vexatious and baseless claims, many of which won’t go far. But it also levels the playing field in a meaningful way.

Where employees once sought resolution through internal mediation before escalating a dispute, it’s now far easier to bypass that process entirely and go straight to a formal claim. The FWC’s 70 per cent increase in workload is telling evidence of exactly that.

“AI is giving employees a powerful mirror that many organisations are not yet prepared for,” says Sarah Queenan FCPHR, Founder and Managing Director of Humanify HR and a member of AHRI’s ER/IR advisory panel.

“It reflects back inconsistencies, capability gaps and workplace risks that may have previously gone unnoticed, making it much harder for organisations to hide behind poor processes or weak leadership.”

Internal complaints on the rise

The surge in FWC submissions has been accompanied by a rise in internal complaints, says Mannering.

“We are seeing employees using AI both to air grievances and to provide responses to allegations against them,” she says. “In many instances, the content AI generates is lengthy, and sometimes the issues it raises aren’t legitimate or are overstated. This adds a burden on employers to identify the elements of the complaint, and to decipher employee responses.”

Queenan adds that employees are asking AI to scrutinise workplace documents they suspect may disadvantage them.

“Employees are using AI to review employment contracts, letters of offer, workplace policies and enterprise agreements. In the past, many employees would not have taken the time to closely examine these documents unless they were already in dispute,” says Queenan.

The positive aspect to all this is that employees are becoming more informed, she adds.

“AI is making workplace rights and obligations more accessible and [making it] easier for employees to understand what they might be able to challenge.

“For organisations with strong governance, well-trained managers and robust documentation, this is unlikely to create significant issues. For organisations with inconsistent practices or poor record-keeping, AI may accelerate the discovery of problems that already existed.”

What should employers focus on to reduce AI-driven complaints?

Queenan and Mannering both say AI-assisted complaints generally fall into three categories:

1. Leadership practices. “AI is particularly effective at analysing patterns of behaviour,” says Queenan. 

“As a result, I believe organisations with low leadership capability will feel the impact first. Employees are becoming more confident in questioning inconsistent treatment, poor communication, lack of procedural fairness and behaviours that don’t align with organisational values.”

HR’s response: Addressing low leadership capability should be a priority, regardless of complaints, says Queenan.

“The rise of AI is raising the standard for leadership, which is understandably creating discomfort for many leaders as they look to build their capability to respond to both the challenges and opportunities of the modern AI-enabled workplace. “Managers can no longer rely on authority alone; they need capability, consistency and sound judgement.”

She says the rise of AI-driven complaints can serve as a useful starting point for conversations with managers about consistency, documentation, procedural fairness and sound decision-making. 

“Managers should be supported to understand their obligations and when to seek HR advice, particularly in complex or sensitive workplace matters.”

💡 HR resource: Leadership and management essentials course.

2. Pay and working hours.

Some employees are asking AI to review their timesheets and pay slips to try to identify underpayments, says Mannering. 

“Those claims based solely on AI aren’t necessarily going to be correct, but if a complaint is made, employers then have to spend time auditing their own payroll to identify if an underpayment actually exists.”

While she says AI is good at sorting data, it lacks the ability to understand the intricacies of pay cycles and wage increases, she says.

“Despite AI’s limitations, we are seeing complaints about supposed underpayments increasing, so it is an important issue to address.”

HR’s response: Ensuring your payroll teams are following processes and keeping records is an obvious first step, but to reduce complaints, educating employees about the terms of their employment should be prioritised, says Mannering.

“If they understand the nuances of how they are paid, they are more likely to review pay information themselves and, hopefully, to raise any issues informally first.”

💡 HR resource: Infographic – preparing managers to have difficult remuneration conversations.

“For organisations with inconsistent practices or poor record-keeping, AI may accelerate the discovery of problems that already existed.” – Sarah Queenan FCPHR, Founder and Managing Director, Humanify HR

3. Harassment and bullying. While taking accusations of harassment seriously is vital in any organisation, it’s important to appreciate the nuances of AI-driven complaints of this nature, says Queenan.

“Employees may input their own account of a performance discussion, workplace conflict or management interaction and seek advice from a LLM like ChatGPT. While AI can be helpful in identifying potential issues, it’s only assessing the information provided to it by the employee.

“Workplace matters are often nuanced, involving multiple perspectives and facts that may not be presented to the AI tool. As a result, employees may receive advice that lacks important context or overstates the likelihood of a workplace issue existing… [such as] bullying or harassment.”

HR’s response: Fostering a culture that supports employees’ right to speak up about interpersonal matters can help resolve issues that might otherwise become complaints, says Mannering.

This can be as simple as managers assuring teams their door is open, or HR encouraging unhappy employees to speak to them confidentially.

“This sort of open communication and reassurance from leadership encourages employees to discuss and resolve issues, rather than escalate them,” she says.

Another example of the nuances that AI misses, which Queenan has seen first-hand, is in the interpretation of “highly technical agreement provisions” in enterprise agreements.

“[Employees] subsequently raise claims that were not supported by the actual wording or intent of the agreement,” she says. “Enterprise agreements are complex industrial instruments that often require an understanding of bargaining history, interaction with legislation and established industrial principles within the context of the particular organisation, industry or sector. 

“Even experienced workplace relations practitioners can disagree on interpretation, so AI is certainly to be relied on with great caution in these areas.”  

How HR practitioners can use AI to respond

As AI becomes more entrenched in organisations, Mannering predicts it will become the default tool that both employees and employers reach for when dealing with workplace issues.

“The flip side to what’s happening now is that employers have access to AI, too. They can utilise it to check their policies and contracts, identify any gaps or risks, and make changes before those gaps become FWC complaints.”

For example, HR practitioners can use internal, safe AI platforms to do:

1. Policy auditing

An employer can feed their existing workplace policies into an AI tool and ask it to identify language that is ambiguous, outdated or inconsistent with current Fair Work Act obligations — the same exercise a disgruntled employee might run before lodging a complaint.

2. Contract gap analysis

AI can cross-reference employment contracts against relevant modern awards to flag underpayments, missing clauses or terms that may not hold up under scrutiny — issues that, left unchecked, are precisely the kind that end up before the FWC.

3. Grievance triage

When a complaint is raised internally, HR teams can use internal AI platforms to assess its likely merit, identify the relevant legislation or precedent and determine the appropriate response — allowing them to resolve legitimate issues quickly and push back on weak claims with confidence.

While you should only ever use close-source, approved AI systems for initiatives like this, it’s still a good idea to de-identify the employee/situation as a matter of best-practice.

4. Manager training and scenario modelling

AI can generate realistic grievance scenarios based on an organisation’s specific industry, size and workforce — helping HR teams train managers to handle difficult conversations in ways that don’t inadvertently create legal exposure.

💡 HR resource: Having difficult conversations course.

5. Onboarding and induction review

AI can audit onboarding documentation and induction processes to ensure employees are being properly informed of their rights, obligations and the organisation’s complaint procedures from day one — closing off a common line of argument that an employee “wasn’t made aware” of a relevant policy.

In short, AI is giving employees greater confidence to challenge decisions, ask questions and understand their rights.

“This reinforces the need for human intelligence and oversight when dealing with complex legal, industrial or employment matters,” says Queenan. “AI can be a useful starting point, but it should not be treated as a substitute for professional advice.”