Accelerated Innovation

Aligning Performance Management with GenAI Skill Growth

By /

Aligning Performance Management with GenAI Skill Growth

Description

Aligning Performance Management with GenAI Skill Growth involves updating how performance is defined, measured, and rewarded to reflect emerging GenAI roles and responsibilities. This capability ensures that GenAI contributions are visible, valued, and tied to outcomes that support individual development and business strategy.

Why it's Important

As GenAI transforms how work gets done, traditional performance frameworks often lag behind. Without adjustments, employees developing GenAI skills may feel overlooked or undervalued, and managers may lack the tools to recognize new forms of contribution. Aligning performance expectations with GenAI growth ensures that emerging talent is supported, learning is incentivized, and organizational goals stay in sync with technological change.

Why it's Challenging @ Scale

  • Outdated evaluation frameworks: Many performance systems are still based on legacy competencies and fail to reflect GenAI-related contributions.
  • Unclear success criteria for new roles: Employees and managers may struggle to define what “good” looks like for GenAI experimentation, enablement, or tooling.
  • Low confidence in assessing emerging skills: Leaders may not feel equipped to evaluate learning progress or real-world impact in GenAI projects.
  • Misalignment between learning and recognition: Employees who invest in GenAI upskilling may not see those efforts rewarded in reviews or advancement.
  • Inconsistent treatment across teams: Without enterprise alignment, performance expectations may vary widely between business units or regions.

Complexity

High: Updating performance management systems for GenAI requires changes in evaluation criteria, manager training, communication norms, and HR processes across the organization.

Ready to accelerate your GenAI journey?

Click below to validate your access

Let's go!

Taking Action

Though most organizations begin their GenAI journey with significant knowledge gaps, there are targeted actions that can be taken to accelerate the process. Select your group’s current maturity, based on your assessment results, and act today.

The most important part of any journey is starting… To move from “Exploring” to “Experimenting”, focus on the following key actions:
  • Explore Key Concepts & Best Practices: Complete the Enterprise GenAI Talent Best Practices workshop (2 hrs.) to understand foundational key concepts and explore applied best practices:
  • Identifying skills and capabilities needed for GenAI success
  • Defining GenAI-specific roles and responsibilities
  • Planning onboarding and upskilling programs
  • Evaluating current talent gaps and readiness
  • Building talent strategies aligned with GenAI roadmap
  • Define Your Action Plan: Outline concrete, prioritized steps your organization will take to implement GenAI Strategy:
  • Align on your Current State and define your Target State
  • Create an actionable enablement plan
  • Define target timeline and measures of success
  • Deliver Quick Wins: Small, high-impact GenAI projects that can demonstrate tangible value in a short time frame:
  • Introduce GenAI learning goals into review conversations: Encourage managers and employees to co-define skill-building objectives.
  • Recognize early GenAI contributions: Call out experimentation, prototyping, or enablement support in team meetings and feedback cycles.
  • Update team OKRs to reflect GenAI activity: Include exploration, upskilling, or adoption metrics in performance alignment.
To move from Experimentation to “Lifting-Off”, prioritize the following actions:
  • Complete one or more of our Deep Dive Courses: Begin exploring key concepts and best practices, including::
  • AI Awareness & Literacy Enablement Best Practices
  • Defining Your AI Job Family
  • Role-Based GenAI Skill Acceleration Best Practices
  • GenAI Talent Management (Brand, Recruiting, Retention, Performance Management, & 3rd Party Management) Best Practices
  • Nail It Before You Scale It: Assess and optimize your solution or process before adopting it at scale:
  • Assess Your Proposed Solution or Process: Review how GenAI-related work is currently evaluated and identify inconsistencies or gaps.
  • Define in-scope Processes and Guardrails: Clarify which roles, behaviors, and outputs related to GenAI should be incorporated into performance criteria.
  • Close any Data or Measurement Gaps: Identify where learning progress, GenAI contributions, or outcomes are not yet tracked or recognized.
  • Define Your Adoption & Scaling Plan: Create a structured roadmap for how GenAI solutions will be rolled out across teams, workflows, or business units:
  • Define Your Phased Implementation Plan: Determine how updates to performance reviews and rating systems will be introduced across functions.
  • Build Awareness and Finalize Enablers: Equip HRBPs and managers with updated frameworks and communication guidance.
  • Operationalize Your Comms Plan: Ensure consistent messaging across leadership, HR, and employees on how GenAI performance alignment will evolve.
To move from Lifting-Off to “Accelerating”, prioritize the following actions:
  • Formalize Your Best Practices: Document and standardize what’s working to ensure consistent, scalable success across teams and use cases:
  • Embed GenAI objectives in performance templates: Integrate GenAI learning, contribution, or enablement into standard evaluation forms.
  • Document successful examples: Highlight how specific roles, teams, or projects have connected GenAI work to career growth.
  • Standardize feedback loops: Create manager prompts and review questions that reinforce recognition of GenAI skill growth.
  • Accelerate Your Adoption: intensifying efforts to embed GenAI across your organization by expanding use cases, increasing user engagement, and removing adoption barriers:
  • Roll out GenAI alignment across multiple business units: Extend revised performance criteria to new teams, functions, or geographies.
  • Include GenAI impact in talent calibration sessions: Factor in GenAI contributions during promotion, succession, or compensation discussions.
  • Create GenAI performance champions: Identify HR and business leaders who can coach others and model best practices.
  • Celebrate Your Wins: Publicly acknowledge team accomplishments to build and sustain adoption momentum:
  • Highlight performance milestones tied to GenAI: Recognize individuals or teams whose GenAI efforts directly supported business outcomes.
  • Share stories of skill development and growth: Promote internal case studies showing how GenAI learning led to advancement.
  • Reward experimentation and learning, not just delivery: Reinforce that early efforts, learning curves, and enablement have value.
The “Accelerating” stage represents “Target State” for many capabilities. “Breaking Away”, on the other hand, suggests that the specific Capability represents a clear competitive advantage for your business.
  • Streamline & Embed: Integrate GenAI into core workflows while eliminating friction points to make usage seamless and routine:
  • Incorporate GenAI skill growth into enterprise systems: Ensure platforms used for reviews, learning, and career tracking reflect GenAI dimensions.
  • Integrate GenAI development into business planning: Align GenAI upskilling and role evolution with team and org-level objectives.
  • Reinforce GenAI expectations in role design: Update job architecture and job families to clearly reflect GenAI skill relevance.
  • Leverage Automation: Using GenAI-powered tools and workflows to streamline repetitive tasks, enhance operational efficiency, and reduce manual effort:
  • Use GenAI to generate performance input summaries: Help managers identify GenAI-related contributions based on projects or tool usage.
  • Automate pulse surveys on GenAI engagement: Gather real-time sentiment on skill confidence, enablement, and role alignment.
  • Personalize learning and feedback prompts: Recommend relevant resources or questions based on employee goals and review cycles.
  • Evolve & Further Accelerate: continuously refining GenAI strategies based on insights and outcomes, while expanding into more complex or high-impact use cases:
  • Analyze performance data for equity and impact: Ensure GenAI skill growth is fairly recognized across roles, levels, and identities.
  • Update frameworks based on evolving GenAI competencies: Adapt performance systems as GenAI tools and use cases evolve.
  • Share benchmark insights and talent trends: Use external data to guide how your org defines, measures, and rewards GenAI excellence.

Key "Watchouts"

  • Treating GenAI as a side project: If performance systems only reward traditional outputs, employees may deprioritize GenAI learning and contributions.
  • Setting vague or inconsistent expectations: Without clear definitions, managers and employees may interpret GenAI goals differently.
  • Over-indexing on delivery over development: Focusing only on short-term outcomes may discourage long-term upskilling or experimentation.
  • Leaving managers unsupported: Without training and tools, even well-intentioned leaders may fail to recognize or develop GenAI talent.
  • Failing to evolve with the technology: As GenAI capabilities shift, outdated criteria can frustrate high performers and stall progress.

Targeted Benefits

  • Clearer alignment between business goals and GenAI strategy: Performance expectations help drive the right behaviors across the organization.
  • Faster GenAI skill development across teams: When learning is tied to evaluation, people invest more in growth.
  • Improved talent visibility and recognition: GenAI contributors gain credibility, mobility, and motivation when their impact is visible.
  • Better retention of future-ready talent: People stay longer when they see a path for growth, learning, and reward.
  • More consistent performance across functions: Standardized criteria help teams scale GenAI maturity in a unified, measurable way.

Looking to Move Faster, and 'Go Bigger'?

Contact us to explore additional acceleration resources or support.
Click here
Eddie
Accelerated Innovation

Hi, I'm Eddie 👋

Ask me anything about AI concepts, best practices, Accelerated Innovation solutions, or how to get started.