U.S. Labor Department sets AI workplace rules for employers and workers

The Labor Department’s AI Best Practices pushed employers to treat artificial intelligence as a workplace management issue, not just a software rollout. Released on Oct. 16, 2024, the roadmap said AI should enhance job quality and protect workers’ rights and well-being, while requiring developers and employers to build review processes, governance structures, meaningful human oversight for significant employment decisions, transparency with workers, worker input, training, and safeguards for worker data. The department said the guidance built on its May 16, 2024 AI and Worker Well-being principles, and an online unveiling that day brought together labor, business, nonprofit and government leaders.

For monday.com, that framework lands directly in the middle of product, engineering, HR and go-to-market work. The company said in 2025 that its AI strategy rested on three pillars, AI Blocks, Product Power-ups and the Digital Workforce, then said in May 2026 that it had become an AI Work Platform with agents operating under human supervision. That combination makes the Labor Department’s checklist unusually practical for a SaaS company shipping automation into customer workflows, because it puts the burden on managers to explain when AI is being used, how much control a human keeps, and what data the system can touch.

The biggest risk in the department’s guidance is the black box. The roadmap called for ethically developed standards, transparent AI use, worker participation, protection of labor and employment rights, AI training, and protection of worker data, all of which push companies to prove that automation is improving work instead of obscuring decisions. That is especially relevant at monday.com, where a Nov. 4, 2025 report with Nielsen said the company surveyed 500 directors across the U.S. and U.K. and analyzed millions of workflows, and found that directors at large companies were 2x more likely to experience “AI guilt.”

The policy backdrop has only sharpened. On Sept. 24, 2024, the Labor Department announced a separate framework aimed at reducing unintentional discrimination and accessibility barriers in AI hiring technology, showing how quickly workplace AI has moved from broad principles to job-specific compliance issues. The department’s 2025 AI Strategies said it is using AI to improve working conditions, increase employment opportunities and protect work-related benefits and rights, while its 2026 AI literacy framework said baseline AI literacy is needed across the workforce and education system. Julie Su framed the central obligation plainly: “We have a shared responsibility to ensure that AI is used to expand equality, advance equity, develop opportunity and improve job quality.”