MAI Job Care

Project Overview

Long-term care (LTC) systems face mounting pressures from ageing populations, workforce shortages, and limited productivity growth in a labour-intensive sector.

This international research project explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI)—particularly algorithmic management(AM), where managerial functions are delegated to data-driven systems—may help future-proof the LTC sector. We examine how AI can both address and exacerbate challenges of recruitment, retention, and care quality by reshaping work organisation, job design, and relationships between managers, workers, care recipients, and families.

Focusing on five countries—Austria, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, and the UK—the project investigates how AI and AM are being deployed across different care regimes and their implications for job and care quality. We will explore whether AI applications such as automated rostering, recruitment tools, and electronic performance monitoring can enhance efficiency and empower workers and care recipients, or conversely intensify work, increase surveillance, and undermine autonomy.

Through comparative company case studies and engagement with key stakeholders—including policymakers, social partners, care providers, and AI experts—the research will identify conditions under which AI can improve both care outcomes and employment standards.

Empirically, the project will generate new evidence on how AM/AI is transforming management and work in LTC. Theoretically, it will refine job quality frameworks to reflect digital management realities. Its findings will inform European and national policies on the digital transformation of care, supporting the development of fair, sustainable, and high-quality AI-enabled care systems.