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AI-driven HR decisions can leave employees feeling dehumanised and less valued, increasing their likelihood of disengagement.
Employees are more likely to feel less committed to their organisations, develop stronger intentions to quit, and even exhibit greater retaliatory feelings when artificial intelligence (AI) is responsible for important HR decisions such as promotions, pay raises, and performance reviews, according to new research from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School.
Titled AI in Human Resource Management: A Driver of Organisational Dehumanisation and Negative Employee Reactions, the study is based on three online experiments involving nearly 700 participants. The study examines how employees respond to AI-driven promotion and performance-review decisions.
The findings revealed that employees react significantly more negatively when important career decisions are made by AI systems instead of human managers.
Researchers attribute this response to a phenomenon called “organisational dehumanisation” – where employees feel they are treated as a functional unit rather than as an individual with unique qualities and emotions. In such cases, employee characteristics are seen as data numbers, reinforcing a sense of being objectified and not being treated as humans.
According to the study, employees perceive AI systems as lacking empathy and failing to account for social and ethical nuances. Many also find AI decision-making processes opaque and difficult to understand, leaving them feeling powerless and excluded from the decision-making process.
“Putting it all together, loss of empathy, transparency, and control can leave people feeling objectified,” said Professor Choi Sungwoo, Assistant Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management of CUHK Business School, who led the study.
In addition, researchers identified a “cultural paradox”, whereby companies with highly collaborative and people-oriented workplace cultures may face stronger resistance when adopting AI in HR functions.
In such environments, employees tend to expect management to value cooperation, support, and interpersonal relationships. AI-driven personnel decisions may therefore conflict with employees’ expectations of a human-centred workplace.
Despite these concerns, the researchers emphasised that companies should not abandon AI altogether. Instead, they recommend adopting hybrid systems in which humans remain accountable for consequential decisions.
“This hybrid approach helps preserve the sense that consequential decisions about people are ultimately made by people,” said Professor Choi.
“If AI serves only in an assistive capacity with limited input into the final decision, the dehumanisation effect should be substantially mitigated.”
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