Jun 30, 2025

On June 5th, – an influential HR podcast that has become essential listening for people professionals – hosted a live event in San Francisco that brought together 80 senior HR leaders from across the tech industry. The intimate gathering featured a live podcast recording, and networking sessions that sparked honest conversations about the intersection of artificial intelligence and performance management. I had the opportunity to speak with both speakers and attendees, including Jennifer Rettig (Chief People Officer at Pendo), Gianna Driver (former Chief People Officer at Lattice), Danny Guillory (Chief People Officer at Glassdoor), Kelli Dragovich (interim Chief People Officer at Quizlet), and Tiffany Stevenson (former Chief People Officer at WeightWatchers). Their insights reveal a profession grappling with fundamental questions about what actually drives performance – and how technology can help or hinder that mission. 1. Your Top Performers Are Watching How You Handle Your Worst Ones One surprising revelation came from Jennifer Rettig at Pendo, whose team discovered something unexpected in their latest engagement surveys. While compensation and career development typically dominate employee feedback, this time a different theme emerged. "What really stood out was this idea of accountability," Rettig explained. "When team members aren't performing, their peers think managers didn't move fast enough to exit them from the business. Your top employees don't want to be saddled with teammates who aren't engaged, who aren't doing their work, who may be quietly quitting." MORE FOR YOU Today's NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Monday, June 30 Idaho Shooting: Suspected Gunman Found Dead After 2 Firefighters Are Killed In Sniper Ambush Stock Futures Rise After Canada Drops Digital Tax To Salvage U.S. Trade Deal This insight flips conventional wisdom about engagement on its head. The issue wasn't that high performers needed more development or recognition—they needed to see that excellence mattered and "What we learned was holding managers more accountable to take timely action actually drove engagement of your higher performers," Rettig said. “You've got to be both accountable to managing your poor performers, and at the same time, you've got to be accountable to your high performers and continue to work to retain them.” Your engagement problem might not be about what you're giving your best people – it's about what you're tolerating from everyone else. 2. Performance Reviews Are Broken Because We're Fighting Human Nature The numerical rating system that dominates performance management isn't just ineffective – it's neurologically incompatible with how humans actually evaluate each other. Gianna Driver, former Chief People Officer at Lattice, pointed to research that should make every HR leader reconsider their current approach: "I read an called 'The Feedback Fallacy' that talked about how we as humans are neurologically hardwired to evaluate people more in relative terms, less so in absolute numerical terms." Yet most organizations persist with systems that ask managers to assign numerical scores—a practice Driver believes is fundamentally flawed. "I believe the way of numerically assigning a score to a person is fraught with problems and in the not too distant future will become much more antiquated." Tiffany Stevenson from WeightWatchers offered a solution that's gaining traction: radical simplification. Instead of complex rating matrices, some forward-thinking organizations are moving toward "on track, off track" assessments that focus on clarity and forward momentum rather than numerical precision. This connects to a broader theme that emerged from the conversations: effectiveness matters more than sophistication. As Stevenson put it, “There are no explosive new ideas coming out of a performance playbook, but there are ways to do it more efficiently and consistently.” Stop fighting human psychology with complex rating systems. Simple, clear frameworks that align with how people naturally think will always outperform elaborate scoring mechanisms. 3. AI Isn't Just About Automation—It's About Scaling Empathy While much of the AI discussion in HR centers on automation and efficiency, the most compelling use cases described by these leaders focused on scaling human connection. Kelli Dragovich from Quizlet articulated the vision clearly: "If you can scale yourself to be everywhere and anywhere when people need it in the flow of their work, that's where you can create a ton of value. Once someone figures out how to make 10 of me, that's insane." But this isn't about replacing human judgment – it's about making personalized support accessible to everyone. Danny Guillory from Glassdoor emphasized that this requires unprecedented organizational transparency: "I'm a big believer in transparency and the trust that it builds with your workforce. If you tell them as much as you can within legal and ethical bounds, that makes AI initiatives much easier." Tiffany Stevenson reinforced this point while discussing AI's broader impact: "It's irresponsible at this point to not be taking AI seriously. But the real win is that AI for tier one requests made it exciting for folks who had been working in these roles forever to finally get career pathing opportunities." The pattern is clear: AI's highest value lies in augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing them, enabling more personalized, empathetic interactions at scale. The organizations that win with AI will be those that use it to make every employee feel more seen and supported, not those that use it to reduce human touch-points. 4. Engagement Isn't a Program—It's Your Company's Identity Perhaps the most provocative insight came from Tiffany Stevenson, who challenged the entire framework around employee engagement initiatives. "It's been otherized," she said, drawing an unexpected parallel. "It's like the thing that drives me crazy in grocery stores when they have the ethnic food aisle—why is there an ethnic food aisle versus just food? That's what happens with engagement, where it's like this thing that you do when you launch your engagement survey." This "otherization" manifests when organizations treat engagement as a separate work-stream with defined start and end dates, rather than as a fundamental expression of company values. Stevenson advocates for a radically different approach: "Looking at it as a series of micro decisions that you make every day—from who you hire to how you develop people to how you talk about your values." The solution isn't more engagement initiatives, but rather embedding engagement principles into every operational decision. "It becomes like a project or an initiative instead of just an expression of your identity as a company, as a brand," Stevenson explained. Kelli Dragovich reinforced this theme when discussing the broader transformation happening in HR: "The days of HR doing things for employees is kind of over. We're starting from scratch with the business. Not 'here's our programs'—it's 'what do we want to do?' There's permission now to not do things that we felt shackled to do in the past." Stop running engagement surveys and start making engagement-driven decisions. Every hiring choice, every meeting structure, every policy should reflect your commitment to creating an environment where people thrive. 5. The Future of People Analytics Is Hiding in Plain Sight The best innovative performance insights aren't coming from traditional surveys or self-assessments—they're emerging from organizational network analysis and passive data collection. Danny Guillory shared a powerful example from his time building a mentorship program: "I crossed different data points—Slack connections, email connections, and 360 review requests. About 80% of the results were people I could have predicted, but 20% were people I'd never heard of who turned out to be incredible connectors." This approach revealed hidden influencers who became highly effective mentors, demonstrating the power of looking beyond what people self-declare about their performance. "Seeing if you can identify not just what people say they've achieved or what their managers say they've achieved, but if there are other ways to get at it," Guillory explained. The implications extend far beyond mentorship programs. Organizations that master this approach can identify burnout patterns, collaboration bottlenecks, and engagement issues in real-time rather than waiting for quarterly surveys that capture sentiment weeks after problems emerge. The most valuable performance data already exists in your organization's digital exhaust. The question is whether you're sophisticated enough to find it and wise enough to act on it. Looking Forward These conversations reveal a profession in the midst of fundamental transformation. The traditional playbook—annual reviews, engagement surveys, standardized development programs—is being replaced by something more dynamic, data-driven, and individually responsive. As Jennifer Rettig noted about the challenge facing all organizations: "Can you grow to be whatever the next thing or phase of your business is with the same amount of people that you have today? What more can you do with what you have today with the help of AI?" The answer, according to these HR leaders, lies in leveraging AI not to reduce headcount but to dramatically increase the quality and personalization of people support. The future of HR isn't about having fewer human interactions—it's about making every human interaction more meaningful through intelligent augmentation. For people leaders navigating this transition, the message is clear: the organizations that will thrive are those willing to abandon what isn't working, embrace data-driven insights, and use AI to scale their most human capabilities. The transformation is already underway. The only question is whether you'll lead it or be swept along by it. I write about the intersection of AI and performance management for Forbes. I'm the founder of , an AI Coaching Platform for Managers.