The Society for Human Resource Management identified AI governance in employment as one of its top five workplace issues for 2026. In parallel, unions and worker advocates intensified their push throughout 2025 for legislation regulating employers’ use of AI and digital monitoring tools. Key concerns include automated firing, discriminatory algorithmic scoring, invasive electronic surveillance, and workers having no visibility into the systems evaluating their performance. State-level legislation in Colorado, Illinois, and New York addresses some of these harms, but leaves the majority of US workers without meaningful protection.
Published by: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the leading US professional HR organisation, alongside labour union and worker advocacy groups.
Key finding: AI-driven employment decisions — hiring scores, performance monitoring, automated termination — are operating in most US workplaces without any requirement that employers explain how these systems work or any right for workers to contest them.
Context: SHRM’s designation of this as a top 2026 issue signals that AI workplace governance has moved from activist concern to mainstream HR compliance territory. The gap between the three states with partial protections and the rest of the country represents tens of millions of workers with no recourse when AI systems affect their employment.