Trust, Employee Perception and Ethical Governance

The video on Trust, Employee Perception and Ethical Governance forms part of the FREE08 unit on People Professionals and Artificial Intelligence, addressing Assessment Criterion 2.1 on ethical considerations in AI use. It covers how employees form perceptions of AI fairness in high-stakes areas of people practice — including recruitment decisions, performance evaluations, promotion recommendations, and workforce planning — and how those perceptions connect to wider questions of engagement, trust, and organisational culture. The video also introduces the concept of algorithmic bias, examining how bias enters AI systems through training data and design, with reference to biased recruitment tools as a concrete example of AI misuse in HR.

The video addresses the "black box" problem of AI decision-making, discussing explainability and what it means for transparency in people practice. It examines the risk of discrimination against protected characteristics, the accountability question of who bears responsibility for AI-driven decisions, and how fairness and equality considerations sit at the heart of ethical governance. Practical governance structures — including impact assessments, demographic monitoring of outcomes, and policy frameworks governing permissible AI applications — are among the concrete mechanisms the video covers in relation to these principles.

Communication strategy and employee involvement are also treated as substantive topics in their own right. The video looks at how openness about AI use shapes employee responses differently from undisclosed deployment, and at governance mechanisms such as employee representation on AI committees, consultation during procurement, and feedback channels for those affected by AI decisions. Taken together, the ethical principles of fairness, accountability, transparency, and human oversight are examined both as abstract commitments and as the basis for systematic governance structures within people practice.