Should promotion depend on how workers use AI?

Should promotion depend on how workers use AI?

Duncan Trevithick's firm has a bonus scheme based on the use of AI

For Duncan Trevithick, being skilled at using AI at work is in his own interest - if he can use it to complete more tasks more quickly, he will be eligible for a bonus at the end of the year.

At first glance, that sounds like a strong incentive. But he is wondering what he really gets out of it.

"The uncomfortable interpretation is that employees are being assessed on how effectively they can participate in their own redundancy," says Spain-based Trevithick, 34, who works in marketing for an AI training data company.

Yet if AI helps him clear two days' worth of work each week, he says the financial return does not match up.

"I do not receive two days off or a 40% pay rise. The higher output simply becomes the new baseline. In the short term, that may help me get promoted. In the longer term, I have helped prove how much of my job no longer requires me," he says.

"I'm just trying to view myself as a manager, and I'm managing some people, and I'm also managing AI agents, or AI loops, or whatever you want to call it."

Using workers' AI skills as a way to decide whether they should receive a bonus, be promoted - or even be dismissed - is becoming increasingly common.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said on the Rapid Response podcast in March: "Today, AI at Accenture is how we do work. So if you want to get promoted, you've got to do the things that we do in order to operate at Accenture."

And major companies including Disney, Meta, JP Morgan and KPMG have rolled out "AI leaderboards" to monitor and rank employees' use of the range of LLMs and platforms available to them, according to media reports

Employees feel pressure to go along with it because of the current jobs market - in the UK, vacancies have fallen to a five-year low

Meanwhile, 75% of the 1,881 UK jobseekers surveyed in July by recruiter Gi Group said they would not be discouraged from applying to an organisation that had added AI proficiency to individual performance reviews. Around 22% said it would put them off.

"It's like being in the sea and you see a giant wave coming. You can get out a surfboard and try and ride it as long as possible, or you can just let it take you under. But you can't stop the wave," says Trevithick.

But what is happening at the large consultancy Pamela (her name has been changed to protect her identity) works for does not sit right with her.

She is a US-based senior executive who has seen that, although there is no formal requirement for employees to use AI, it is clearly influencing who gets rewarded and who falls behind.

"The ground is shifting under us. You've got to demonstrate [AI] fluency and fluidity as one of your key achievements. It's kind of quiet where nobody's saying, 'learn AI or else'. But let me tell you, in performance reviews, they reward who uses it well," says Pamela.

That change, she adds, means AI skills are now being valued more than actual experience, creating a "two tier workforce".

"You've got the same job title, same tenure, but different value based on whether someone treats AI as a threat or a tool - that gap widens really quickly once leadership notices it," says Pamela.

"AI fluency beats credentials every day. Somebody that has 15, 20 years of experience and no AI fluency will be passed over for those that have, say, three years, but are fast with the tools."

She adds: "If you're not visibly using AI, you see slower promotion timelines. It's harder to be seen, and it's harder to fight being on that shortlist."

But is it legal for companies to move the goalposts in this way?

Legally, employers are in the clear, confirms Tina Chander, partner and employment lawyer at Weightmans. But she says it does raise questions about pay and fairness.

"The question then becomes whether the employer increases expectations on the basis that the employee can now produce more work. Is that fair?" questions Chander.

"And if an employee is effectively doing more because AI has made them more efficient, should they be rewarded differently? Or are they effectively making themselves redundant, thus acting as a disincentive to be productive?"

Chander advises businesses to put clear policies, training and boundaries in place, or they risk employees raising disputes over fairness, performance expectations and job security.

"Because they misunderstand it, this is not being reflected to employees," says Rahman, who runs a London-based consultancy, HR Habitat.

A lack of clarity around AI use is certainly causing frustration at Pamela's company.

"Leadership is being inconsistent and vague on purpose. Firms want productivity gains without owning the disruption narrative," she says.

"If something goes wrong, they're going to say, 'I didn't tell you to do that. Where'd you get that from?' Then if you did something with AI, and it works, great."

Making AI use mandatory at work can end up being purely performative, rather than delivering any real positive effect, warns Kamila Miller, applied AI researcher and lecturer at Henley Business School.

"Make AI usage a KPI [key performance indicator], and people will log their interactions to hit the metric, route work through a chatbot that did not need it, and generate AI-flavoured outputs that look productive on a dashboard. You will measure adoption. You will not measure judgement, learning, or better decisions," states Miller, who is based in Reading.

"You have not made people more skilled - you have made them more obedient."

"We found that people... were asking: 'Do you want us to use AI for AI's sake?'

"In the end we backtracked and we said: 'Look, the most important thing for your performance is that you are doing, whatever your job is, as well as possible. A lot of times AI can help you with that. But if it can't, I'm not going to force you to do that.'"

Despite those high-profile moves, some staff still think they need to demonstrate AI proficiency - Pamela is one of them.

In her mid 50s, she plans to retire within 10 years, and wants to keep her job so she does not risk losing any pension and health benefits. She is visibly increasing how AI helps her bring in new clients, and making sure she gets credit for it.

As for Duncan Trevithick, he is doing his best to future proof himself with a number of side projects.

"If AI can do a job better than you can, it makes sense for the business to replace you. That's how the capitalist model works. So it's about, how can you move into a position where you own assets where you can leverage AI, and then you benefit," says Trevithick.