How to Track Employee Growth With AI for Performance Reviews

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See why more companies are using AI for performance reviews and show how you can leverage an AI system to streamline performance management.

Performance reviews help both employees and managers get aligned on how things are going, identify room for improvement, and outline a clear path forward for the employee’s growth. The challenge, though, is that these reviews take up a lot of managers’ bandwidth. Leaders are already stretched thin, leading to lukewarm performance reviews lacking meaningful substance, leaving employees without clear direction.

Thankfully, the days of manual performance reviews filled with subjective assessments and endless paperwork are becoming a thing of the past. Thanks to AI tools and artificial intelligence, businesses can now streamline the performance review process, ensuring more accurate, data-driven insights into team performance. What was once a science fiction dream is now helping managers offer constructive feedback that boosts employee engagement and simplifies decision-making. 

AI-powered performance reviews transform how organizations approach employee evaluations, but they still require human oversight. In this guide, we’ll explore why more companies are using AI for performance reviews and show how you can leverage an AI system to streamline performance management

Why Do Companies Use AI for Performance Reviews?

Few employees (or managers, for that matter) greet annual performance reviews with enthusiasm. Subjective judgments by managers, hastily scheduled meetings, and generic feedback make most performance reviews less about optimizing skills and more about checking a box. It’s no wonder why just 14% of employees find their performance reviews inspiring.

Companies are increasingly turning to AI for performance reviews for so many reasons, including: 

  • Accurate feedback: Manager bias is always a concern in performance reviews. AI tools use black-and-white performance data to offer fairer, consistent evaluations that reduce unconscious bias in employee evaluations. 
  • Improved leadership efficiency: Managers and human resources are still heavily involved in the process, but with a helping hand from AI tools that quickly parse performance data with advanced algorithms. This gives leaders data-driven insights into individual performance. 
  • Employee engagement: Occasional performance reviews are important, but they shouldn’t be the only time employees receive feedback. More companies are using AI for performance reviews to support real-time feedback. Even the most harried managers can rely on AI technology to offer recognition and support to employees — two crucial ingredients for employee engagement and retention.
  • Time-saving integrations: You likely already have an existing tech stack. Fortunately, AI performance management systems easily integrate with solutions like Microsoft and even connect to third-party platforms like LinkedIn. There’s no need to retool your processes — connect everything to the AI platform to save time and hassle.

The right AI for performance reviews is simple to set up and requires minimal training. Most solutions are plug-and-play, with intuitive user experiences that speed up time to implementation. Translation: You’ll get up to speed fast and host better performance reviews in no time. 

4 Tips for Using AI for Performance Reviews

AI for performance reviews: RapidBee's Tickets page

Manual performance review processes are outdated, finicky, and low-quality. It’s time to modernize performance reviews so they actually improve work quality. Whether you're an HR professional looking to improve performance metrics or a leader tasked with streamlining operations, follow these tips to maximize the benefits of AI for performance reviews. 

1. Analyze Feedback

AI for performance reviews: RapidBee's Reviews page

Even the most organized managers rely on scattered notes and subjective assessments for traditional performance reviews. That opens the process up to inaccuracies and biases that could do more harm than good for employee performance reviews. 

Artificial intelligence can process vast amounts of performance data to identify patterns, trends, and areas of improvement more accurately. By using AI, businesses can collect and evaluate feedback from multiple sources — peer reviews, self-assessments, and manager evaluations — ensuring a comprehensive employee performance assessment. AI-driven algorithms can pinpoint recurring strengths and weaknesses, highlight inconsistencies, and even suggest tailored development plans for every team member.

Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT are an okay place to start, but they aren’t designed for the nuances of managing employee performance. Go with RapidBee for a GenAI platform that’s fine-tuned to the needs of managers, employees, and HR leaders. Our automated performance review platform automatically schedules meetings and includes customizable review templates baked into the system. 

Not only that, but it combines all RapidBee data on goal-tracking, progress summaries, 360-degree survey feedback, and numerical ratings. Feedback generated by the AI for performance reviews is no surprise, given that RapidBee tracks goal progress, deadlines, completion dates, and updates in the system and alerts both employees and managers about any gaps or missed deadlines. We found that teams using this setup had 14.9% less turnover, 12.5% better productivity, and an 8.9% lift in profitability. 

2. Identify Performance Trends

Have you ever wished you could see into the future? We don’t have time machines just yet, but AI excels at predicting employee performance trends over time. One of the biggest advantages of AI for performance reviews is having the ability to track and analyze patterns in employee performance over time. Instead of relying on periodic assessments, managers check their performance dashboards to get real-time insights into how employees are progressing throughout the review period. 

Easily track productivity levels, collaboration, and how well employees achieve their goals with RapidBee. Our advanced algorithms can analyze past performance evaluations to detect upward or downward trends in engagement, efficiency, or skills. 

Instead of waiting for employees to make errors, HR professionals can use this predictive data to create personalized development plans and provide constructive feedback that keeps employees on track. Users always have the freedom to personalize feedback, although RapidBee AI will also offer actionable recommendations to help you bridge any performance gaps. 

Individual tracking is helpful, but you can also use AI for performance reviews on a team- and company-wide level. Visit your RapidBee dashboard to view performance and goal data on an individual, team, or company-wide basis to better understand combined performance. This approach is especially useful if you want a quick snapshot of company culture and morale averaged across all employees. 

3. Automate Report Generation

RapidBee's Dashboards page

Who has time to type numbers into dozens of reports? Your managers certainly have better things to do with their time. Plus, manual report generation opens up the possibility of errors, which could have a negative impact on employee performance ratings. 

Using AI, managers can largely automate the report generation process by pulling highly accurate data for each employee in real time. Gather data from employee evaluations, self-evaluation forms, peer reviews, manager assessments, and quantitative goal data in RapidBee. 

Thanks to our automatic goal-tracking system that sorts goals by status, due date, completion percentage, and updates, you can maintain an audit trail of all progress data without lifting a finger. When it’s time to generate a report, simply visit your RapidBee dashboard, customize your template, and we create the report for you. Refer to these reports during employee evaluations, promotion discussions, or high-level executive meetings to get a better understanding of your team’s progress. 

4. Streamline Workflows

Performance management systems are helpful, but most of them still require your team to remember to click certain buttons or oversee manual processes. Businesses use AI for performance reviews to eliminate manual work and automate as much as possible. 

For example, RapidBee quickly gathers employee information, generates performance review templates, and schedules meetings and reminders without you lifting a finger. Best of all, the AI manages goal and task dependencies for your team, eliminating the red tape so your team can focus on business, not paperwork. 

Going From Guesswork to Real Employee Development

AI-powered tools can’t replace the human side of performance management, but they can certainly simplify and speed up the administrative side of the process. From analyzing performance feedback to identifying performance trends and automating reports, AI-powered performance reviews offer a data-driven, efficient, and objective approach to performance management. 

RapidBee’s actionable, AI-powered suggestions make performance reviews more valuable for both managers and employees. We recommend using AI for performance reviews, but AI can have a huge impact on other business functions, too.

Learn how to leverage AI to make game-changing improvements in your business: Download RapidBee’s free guide to enhancing employee experience with AI engagement surveys