#work - AlgorithmWatch

Publication, 7 May 2021

People analytics in the workplace – how to effectively enforce labor rights

Increasingly, complex computational systems are being used to monitor, score, manage, promote and even fire employees. These systems are often referred to as people analytics. They have the potential to profoundly influence, alter, and redirect the lives of people at work, and therefore impact their life chances in general. In order for people to not suffer from the use of these systems but ideally benefit from it, there needs to be a comprehensive governance framework. Here’s how we will get there.

Alexandr Bormotin |Unsplash

Story, 15 May 2020

Finland: How to unionize when your boss is an algorithm and you’re self-employed

A group of Finnish couriers launched the Justice4Couriers campaign in 2018. Although they are technically self-employed, they must obey the whims of their platform’s algorithm. They are fighting back.

Analysis , 12 March 2020

People Analytics must benefit the people

In his study, Michele Loi of the Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich develops recommendations on how systems for automated HR management can be used in an ethically responsible manner.

蔡嘉宇 | Unsplash

Blog, 23 December 2019

The year the wrong Amazon burnt: 2019 in review

As the hype around “artificial intelligence” leveled off, the impact of automated decision-making made itself seen. Regulators and civil society fought hard to rein in Big Tech, but much remains to be done to achieve a good balance.

Matt Hoffman |Unsplash

Op-ed, 25 November 2019

Controversial service that ranked job seekers based on personal emails folds following AlgorithmWatch investigation

A Finnish company that automatically parsed the personal emails of job applicants to assess their corporate “fit” discontinued its service after reports by AlgorithmWatch and others raised questions about its legality.

Story, 6 October 2019

Austria’s employment agency rolls out discriminatory algorithm, sees no problem

AMS, Austria's employment agency, is about to roll out a sorting algorithm that gives lower scores to women and to the disabled. It is very likely illegal under current anti-discrimination law.

Story, 2 October 2019

Defective computing: How algorithms use speech analysis to profile job candidates

Some companies and scientists present Affective Computing, the algorithmic analysis of personality traits also known as “artificial emotional intelligence”, as an important new development. But the methods that are used are often dubious and present serious risks for discrimination.

Zac Ong | Unsplash

Essay, 7 August 2019

Personal Scoring in the EU: Not quite Black Mirror yet, at least if you’re rich

A centralized, permanent and public personal scoring system is very unlikely to appear in EU countries, but this does not mean that a large share of the European population is not or will not be subject to invasive scoring mechanisms.

Suganth | Unsplash

Essay, 22 July 2019

Mind The Algorithm

The question of whether automation benefits or damages us citizens is primarily a political one. No one should let themselves be told that only those who have studied mathematics or computer science can take part in the discussion.