AI’s Impact on Work, People, and Labour Law
AI drives growth and efficiency, but also reshapes rights, rules, and daily work. A look at the double effect of AI on organisations and labour law.
AI enters organisations with familiar promises: more growth, greater efficiency. Yet the moment these systems touch work, a second effect emerges. The work itself changes, and so do the rules, rights, and responsibilities around it. What begins as a technical or strategic decision quickly turns into a legal and human question.
Quick takeaways
- AI applications in organisations often pursue growth (more clients, new markets) or efficiency (doing the same with fewer people).
- These shifts have direct effects on employees and their daily work.
- They also trigger indirect effects: new legal, ethical, and organisational questions (privacy, discrimination, works councils, contracts).
- For strategists, builders, and managers, it pays to understand the labour law context early on.
A web of change
In earlier essays I explored the thermostat effect (AI changing the ‘temperature’ of work) and the relative costs of AI agents compared to human staff. Both point to the same underlying reality: AI is not neutral. It pushes processes, costs, and expectations in new directions.
In recent conversations with labour lawyers and workplace advisors, I heard repeatedly how double this effect can be. One of them described the shift very plainly: “AI doesn’t just change what the client does, it changes what we as lawyers have to do.”
Organisations adopt AI in recruitment, workflows, or compliance. At the same time, their legal advisers must think about how these tools alter contracts, equal treatment, or works council rights, while also experimenting with AI in their own practice.
Rob Hoeijmakers
Growth, efficiency and their shadow
For many organisations the starting point is straightforward. AI can be used to grow: reaching more clients, operating across languages and channels, scaling services at low cost. Or it can be used to become more efficient: automating processes, reducing repetitive work, cutting costs.
Both logics are valid, but each brings a shadow side. Growth means managing more interactions, data, and responsibilities. Efficiency means facing the reality that some jobs will change or disappear. That is where legal questions surface. Employers must consider privacy and fairness. Employees wonder about job security, surveillance, and rights.
The role of law in a shifting landscape
What struck me in these conversations is that legal professionals are not outside this shift. They, too, experience AI as both a tool and a subject of concern. As one adviser put it: “Our clients expect answers about fairness, but we’re also learning how to use these systems ourselves.”
New AI-driven legal research tools are powerful, but also limited by access to data. And while these tools promise efficiency, they can also narrow thinking, leaving less space for the creativity that good legal advice requires.
In practice, lawyers and labour specialists must constantly ask: when does an AI-powered process become a matter of employee rights? How do you advise a works council facing automation? What happens when an AI system quietly shifts working conditions without consultation?
Uncover takes another angle, using AI to analyse large volumes of cases and dossiers to reveal hidden patterns. Together, they illustrate how AI and data curation not only affect clients’ workplaces, but also the practice of law itself.
A personal reflection
For me as an AI strategist and builder, these insights are not abstract. They inform the work I do with clients. Some AI projects are clearly about growth, expanding reach, scaling across markets. Others are about efficiency, reducing complexity, cutting costs. Both carry consequences for the people whose work is reshaped.
Understanding the legal dimension helps me advise more responsibly. It ensures that efficiency does not silently become erosion of rights, and that growth does not outpace the frameworks that protect fairness and transparency.
Closing thought
This article is not a conclusion but a field note from exploration. The double effect of AI, on organisations and on the legal frameworks that surround them, creates a web of change. Seeing that web clearly is the first step.
For organisations, for lawyers, and for strategists like myself, the task is to navigate it with awareness. The law may follow technology, but it also shapes the path along which technology becomes part of our work.
Azeem Azhar
Rob Hoeijmakers
Rob Hoeijmakers