Rojgar Job News

Illinois Restricts Use of Artificial Intelligence in Hiring On May 29, 2019, the Illinois Legislature unanimously passed the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act , which, not surprisingly, addresses how employers use artificial intelligence to analyze job applicant video interviews to determine the applicant’s fitness for the position.  Under the new law (assuming it is signed by the Governor, as anticipated), before requesting an applicant submit to a video interview, employers will be required to: notify applicants for positions based in Illinois that it plans to have their video interview analyzed electronically; explain how the artificial intelligence analysis technology works and what general characteristics it will use to evaluate candidates; and obtain the applicant’s consent to these procedures (note: consent does not have to be in writing). Under the bill, employers are required to destroy all copies, including back-ups, of an applicant’s video int...

If we are right to think that the unravelling of lockdown will be accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of employees requesting to work from home, then many employers will shortly start to face some serious posers in relation to the flexible working scheme. These are not new questions, but will be thrown into starker prominence by the sheer number of requests you may have to deal with at the same time. Of course you should grant them where you can, but what if you are unsure? Does granting one home working request set a precedent for others? Assuming that allowing employee A to work from home did not lead any important wheels to fall off, does this mean that his/her colleague B, doing the same job and seeking the same arrangement, must necessarily get a green light also?  Yes and no, but mostly no. A’s success means that you cannot argue that at an “principle” level the role cannot be performed remotely.  But that is not the end of the matter....

By now, many employees working from home in the lockdown will have made quite firm decisions around how they wish to operate going forward.  Some will have decided that there is nothing in their lives quite like their family and, for that reason, that they wish to extend their WFH indefinitely.  Others, on probably very similar grounds, will want to get back to the office as a matter of some urgency. One way or another, we think that employers can expect a significant upswing in flexible working requests starting more or less at the moment that the government relaxes its “WFH if you can” guidance. Much has been written on the shift in the balance of power around flexible working applications.  The pandemic has moved the employer’s usual starting point from “We haven’t done it before, so it probably won’t work, so no”, to “We have done it before and it broadly did work, so, well, what now?” For present purposes, let us...

The world of work has remained broadly the same for the last 100 to 200 years – offices might have lost the wood panelling, trains become less smoky (inside and out!), top hats turned into bowler hats then no hats, beards have gone in, out, then back into fashion,  but the central tenet remains – I pay you money, I expect you to turn up to work and do your job. This holds true even for those industries that loudly trumpet their ‘disruptive’ ways ” –  you only have to visit the newest glass palaces that stand for many modern offices to see the nattily dressed employees largely ignoring the free foosball, PlayStation, beanbags in the break-out rooms, etc., and glued to their desks in rows, just like the same battery chickens of a century ago. The more you fill the office with free fruit and things that look like play and relaxation, the more you are actually giving your staff the least possible reason to leave the building. This assumption has...