Does AI use help or hurt feedback at work? Here's what one survey found.

As AI use ramps up at work, where are the pros and cons, and for whom? New research from professional development firm Highwire shows where AI has entered the feedback loop — and where it’s both a potential problem and a solution for employee development.

Highwire surveyed 1,034 corporate employees on how AI is infiltrating manager-employee relationships. It found that 78% of managers reported using AI to “help draft, edit, summarize, or inform feedback or a performance review” in the last year. Most of those managers, perhaps unsurprisingly, noted that AI sped up the process of prepping that feedback (Highwire told ZDNET it did not ask managers what else they noticed about using AI).

Also: Nearly 70% of workers use AI regularly now – with no time to upskill

However, only 16% of non-managerial employees surveyed were told AI influenced their review. Maybe concerns about being perceived poorly for using AI are behind that drop in transparency: an Atlassian study from June found that owning AI use at work backfired.

The details of how managers are using AI for feedback matter here, though. Having an AI tool format or summarize human-written observations, for example, is a different level of intervention than handing AI some performance data and asking it to crank out a review top to bottom. 

” But 34% found feedback more generic, and 32% said it was less useful. A third of employees potentially pulling less value from their reviews than before AI entered the picture isn’t minor, even if the majority is finding a benefit.

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