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Automated systems are currently used to assign tasks, monitor employees, evaluate employee performance, and make managerial decisions. Thus, algorithms replace and augment traditional employer functions.

Through the collection of vast amounts of data about employees and their performances, large portions of the managerial decision-making process can be automated. The protection of workers’ rights in the deployment of automated systems in employer functions requires that workers understand that such systems are used and how they are used. From this perspective, Sonia Bastigkeit Ericstam analyses how explainability in automated decision making and worker consent to the use of algorithmic management are addressed in the existing and proposed legal framework regulating algorithmic management.

Her chapter argues that, given the imbalance of power in the employment relationship, consent is not a suitable legal ground for automated decision-making in algorithmic management. Further, it argues that the potential for protection of workers’ rights found in the General Data Protection Regulation is underutilised.

Freely available online

The paper "Ai in the Workplace: Regulating Explainability and Consent in Algorithmic Management" is number 135 in the faculty's research series. It is published with Open Access via SSRN.

Read the article here