Concern 342 · Working draft · editorial review in progress
Promotion & performance AI
Promotion and performance AI is software used to judge employees' work or influence advancement, discipline or job loss.
Understanding the concern
A system might count completed tasks, analyse customer ratings or compare activity records. Those measures can miss the difficulty of assignments, support given to colleagues or barriers outside a worker's control. If the score becomes the decision, a narrow measure can quietly become the definition of good work.
Think of judging a teacher only by how many pages a class finishes. The number is easy to count, but it leaves out learning and care. AI performance tools need a similar check: what important work is invisible? Workers should understand the measures and have a meaningful way to add context or correct records.
An example
An employee who handles complex cases receives a lower speed score than colleagues handling routine ones.
Illustrative unless identified as a documented case.
Words in plain English
- AI
- Software that learns patterns from examples or uses rules to perform tasks such as recognizing images or generating text. It can make mistakes and does not understand every situation as a person would.
Evidence and its limits
The 2024 guidance provides design principles. The example is a plausible measurement problem, not a claim about a named employer or current legal requirements.
US Department of Labor · Historical policy guidance
AI Best Practices for Developers and Employers ↗ (opens in a new tab)2024 worker-centred design recommendations, not a claim about current binding federal policy.
Broader frameworks and background
These resources provide context. They do not establish every claim in this concern.
A question to discuss
Which valuable parts of the job are missing from the score, and can employees explain those gaps?
Keep track of different views, what needs checking, and any next step in your own discussion notes.
Open discussion notes →Principles for the conversation
Before you finish · reflect together
Virtues and principles to consider
Virtues are qualities we practice in how we treat people and make choices. They are not scores for judging someone. Use these ideas to explore what a thoughtful response could look like.
Justice
Justice means fair treatment, fair procedures, and attention to who receives benefits and burdens. It asks whether people with less power can be heard and seek repair.
Look at outcomes across different groups and individual cases. Provide a usable way to challenge decisions and correct harm. Equal wording in a policy does not guarantee equal treatment in practice.
Ask together: Who benefits, who bears the cost, and who can challenge the decision?
Dignity
Dignity means recognizing each person's worth regardless of usefulness, status, or a system's score. People deserve respect and a voice in matters that affect them.
Explain important decisions, avoid humiliating treatment, and keep room for a person's story. Do not treat a prediction as a complete account of who someone is.
Ask together: Does this use treat each person as someone whose experience matters?
Listening
Listening means trying to understand someone's experience before preparing an answer. People who use a service, work with it, or are judged by it may notice problems its designers miss.
Invite people to describe what happened in their own words. Repeat back what you understood and let them correct it. A quiet person or a complaint that is hard to measure may still reveal something important.
Ask together: Whose experience have we not heard yet?
Editorial ratings
These are editorial judgments from the register, not measured probabilities or predictions about your situation.
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