Using technology responsibly: Guidance for people professionals

Technology provides opportunities for organisations to improve business outcomes and make work better. But if poorly managed it can also achieve the reverse. When using technology solutions for people management, it’s essential for people professionals to use them responsibly. 

This guide helps people professionals drive forward the responsible use of technology in six areas of people practice:

• equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)
• performance management
• employee wellbeing
• recruitment and workforce planning
• learning and development
• employee voice.

It provides an overview of key uses of technology in people practice and guiding principles for this, as well as the potential benefits and risks.  

The following definitions are applied to the terms ‘responsible’ and ‘technology’ in this guide:

• Responsible: being responsible means having ethical and sustainable practices that consider and involve the workforce and other stakeholders during business decision-making.
• Technology: technology is the application of knowledge or processes to achieve practical goals that are reproducible. This includes AI and more broadly automation tools that do tasks without or (with reduced) human assistance. It can also include other tools which aren’t necessarily about reducing human involvement such as the internet and videoconferencing tools.