The people affected get a say before it ships.
The tenth guardrail is the one most frameworks treat as an afterthought. Built With People means the staff who will work alongside a system, and the customers most likely to be affected by it, are consulted before it is built, not handed a finished decision.
What stakeholder engagement actually looks like
Staff consulted before, not after
Staff who will work alongside a system are consulted before it is built, not handed a fait accompli and a training session.
Who might be disadvantaged, considered explicitly
Customers likely to be affected are considered explicitly, especially anyone who might be disadvantaged by an automated process.
Feedback shapes the design
Feedback from the people closest to a workflow shapes the design, because they know where it actually breaks.
Adoption is built in, not bolted on
The Educate & Adopt stage exists precisely so the people using a system were part of getting it right.
This is where AI programs quietly fail, one workaround at a time
Tools staff were never consulted on get worked around, not adopted. This guardrail is as much a delivery safeguard as an ethical one: systems designed with the people who use them are the ones that actually stay in use.
Grounded in
- Australia’s Voluntary AI Safety Standard, guardrail 10 (stakeholder engagement, including safety, diversity and fairness)
- OECD AI Principles, human-centred values and fairness
The rest of the framework
All ten guardrails run through every engagement. Here are the other nine.
Frequently asked questions
Isn’t this just change management?
Overlapping, but this starts earlier, at design, not at rollout. The people affected shape the system, they do not just get trained on the finished one.
What if staff are worried AI will replace them?
That is exactly the conversation this guardrail is meant to surface early and honestly, rather than let it fester as a rumour.
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