Survey says AI is making performance reviews harder for managers

In short: A new survey suggests AI tools may help people work faster, but they are also making it harder for managers to judge employee performance.

What's going on

Companies are rolling out AI tools to help employees write, summarize, and produce work more quickly. But a survey by Nielsen, commissioned by Monday.com, found that this can create new problems for managers.

In the survey of 1,700 directors and senior managers across seven countries, more than half said it has become harder to evaluate employees’ work after adopting AI. One reason is that work can arrive “polished,” which makes it tough to tell what the employee did versus what the AI did. Nearly half said they now spend more time reviewing and guiding team output.

Managers still feel positive about AI overall. The survey found 94% said they were excited about using AI to improve work. At the same time, 78% said they have changed how they evaluate employees, putting more weight on skills like writing good prompts (the instructions you type into an AI, like giving directions to a taxi driver).

The survey also found that AI is creeping into the review process itself. About 46% of managers said they use AI to help inform decisions, and 39% said leaders are using AI to draft performance reviews. The TechCrunch report notes research suggesting large language models (AI that predicts the next word, like autocomplete on steroids) can repeat biases found in their training data.

What to watch

Expect companies to rewrite rules for performance reviews and decide when AI can or cannot be used. Another pressure point is AI “agents,” which are tools that can take actions on their own, since many managers worry about control and accountability if something goes wrong.

Source: TechCrunch AI