In this sense, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool for transforming and optimising processes, including the promotion of diversity and inclusion. By integrating AI into people management processes, organisations can increase objectivity, correct unconscious biases and improve decision-making.

AI can be an important ally in recruitment, helping to eliminate prejudice by analysing applications without considering personal characteristics such as gender, age or ethnicity. The algorithms focus exclusively on the candidates' competences and skills, providing a more impartial and fair process. This approach can help companies achieve greater diversity in their candidate pool and ensure that selections are based on objective and relevant criteria.

In addition, AI is useful in monitoring patterns of bias in the workplace, such as in promotion processes, feedback or performance evaluations. By analysing this data, it is possible to detect cases of discrimination or unconscious favouritism. AI provides detailed reports, allowing organisations to take corrective action and create a more equitable environment.

AI tools such as virtual assistants and automatic transcription software are also essential for promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities. These resources allow employees with hearing or motor limitations to perform their duties more efficiently and seamlessly, adapting the digital environment and ensuring that everyone has the same opportunities to participate.

However, AI is not without its challenges. When algorithms are fed historical data, they can perpetuate invisible prejudices. For example, if the recruitment algorithm's training data contains a predominance of white men in leadership positions, the system may favour candidates with that profile, perpetuating the bias. This reinforces the need to train AI with diverse data and constantly monitor the results to ensure fairness.

Another challenge for AI is its lack of cultural sensitivity. Although it is a powerful tool, AI still struggles to understand the cultural and social complexities of human interactions. In globalised and multicultural work environments, AI may not fully grasp the nuances of behaviours and expressions from different cultures, which can result in inaccurate interpretations and decisions that don't respect cultural diversity.

The increasingly rapid development of AI over the last few years has aroused the curiosity of users, which necessarily includes companies as employers. The labour legislator has not been indifferent to this reality and, over the last few legislative changes in labour matters, has shown concern in regulating the use of AI in certain matters.

Evidence of this is the fact that the Labour Code establishes that the right to equal opportunities and equal treatment in access to employment, training, promotion and working conditions also applies to decisions based on algorithms or other artificial intelligence systems.

In this context, the legislator's primary concern in labour law is that employers ensure that the use of AI does not result in any kind of direct or indirect discrimination against workers.

At the same time, one of the employer's recently added information duties was precisely to indicate the parameters, criteria, rules and instructions on which algorithms or other artificial intelligence systems that affect decision-making on access to and maintenance of employment, as well as working conditions, including profiling and monitoring of professional activity, are based. This duty of information on the part of the employer is also directed at works councils and trade union representatives.

An “obligation of transparency” has thus been created with regard to the use of artificial intelligence tools in all these aspects, with the aim of enabling workers to anticipate the impact of this type of tool on their labour relations.

Although the regulation of AI tools is still in its infancy in labour matters, there is concern about their potential impact on labour relations and it is expected that legislative changes will increasingly focus on these matters, a concern that will, moreover, cut across various branches of law.

Companies will be required to adapt to the evolution of AI, both on a practical and regulatory level, which, depending on how it is approached, could bring numerous benefits to the labour market.

AI has the potential to play a transformative role in promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace, provided it is used with awareness and responsibility. Technology offers solutions to remove prejudice, promote fairness and make work environments more accessible and inclusive. However, it is crucial that companies monitor the use of AI to avoid perpetuating bias and ensure that systems are built ethically and responsibly and in strict compliance with legislation.

Joana Oliveira, Consultant, SHL Portugal
Luísa Rebelo Cima, Senior Associate Lawyer, VdA


Published in Human Magazine on 4/7/2025