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Chatbots could be called in to help settle disputes between workers and their employers, as the UK’s state-funded conciliation body seeks ways to meet rising demand for its services within a tight budget.
Acas chief executive Niall Mackenzie said rapid rollout of AI would be a critical part of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service’s strategy to cope with an expected surge in calls as ministers make sweeping reforms to employment law.
“My main fear [over the impact of the employment rights bill] is the quantity of work,” he told the Financial Times. “We want to make sure our service remains as good despite the increase. That’s where use of technology, we hope, will help, with AI tools to help our staff.”
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if the two parties [in a dispute] could submit their claims against each other in writing and the machine made the decision?” Mackenzie added.
Any such “blue sky” developments would depend on a fresh injection of funding from government to develop the technology and “test it to destruction” to ensure it was reliable, he said, noting that it would take at least three to four years to implement.
But Acas is already taking “baby steps” with AI and IT upgrades that will help staff handle more calls to its helpline when workers and bosses start engaging with the new requirements of the employment rights bill.
The legislation, which was at the heart of Labour’s election manifesto last year, is still making its way through parliament in the face of fierce opposition to some of its more contentious proposals, such as day one protection against unfair dismissal.
Mackenzie said he expected the legislation to spark a fresh rise in individual disputes brought to Acas for early conciliation, before a claim reached a tribunal, and in the number of collective disputes where unions and employers can seek its help to defuse tensions and strike an agreement.
Acas, whose role as a conciliator stretches back more than a century, resolves more than 70 per cent of individual disputes before they reach a tribunal and 90 per cent of collective disputes.
The body — which reports to the Department for Business and Trade, but offers a free, impartial service to employers and employees — needs to sustain these rates while cutting the average cost of resolving an individual dispute by more than 20 per cent.
“The main driver of cost reduction will be technology,” said Mackenzie, who arrived at Acas this year after a stint as the UK’s trade commissioner for North America. “If we have extra resources we can be more ambitious in what we trial.”
Acas has registered a steady rise in its caseload since the coronavirus pandemic; the number of individual cases filed for conciliation jumped from just over 35,000 in 2020-21 to more than 43,000 in 2024-25.
Driven initially by a rise in pay disputes as inflation soared, there is now a rising share of cases relating to unfair dismissal as the job market weakens and to sex, race and disability discrimination.
Mackenzie attributed the increased caseload to a mix of factors, including cost of living pressures, a recent rise in lay-offs, greater awareness among workers of their rights, greater prevalence of sickness and disability in the workforce and the growing logjam in the UK’s tribunal system.
Long delays in employment tribunals did not make cases inherently more difficult but meant Acas spent longer trying to resolve them before they come to a hearing, he said, adding: “It soaks up resources.”
Mackenzie said he would like Acas to play a bigger role in helping small businesses manage employment relations, however, and in helping resolve collective disputes at an earlier stage, before both sides become entrenched in their positions.
In recent years, Acas’s collective conciliation team has seen a rise in bitterly fought pay disputes where the two parties’ opening positions are wide apart, leading to a highly charged atmosphere — especially in the public sector, where funding pressures leave little scope for negotiation.
At the same time, parties have been unwilling to involve Acas at an early stage, with more of the disputes coming to its conciliators when industrial action, or a ballot on industrial action, is already under way.