Companies are increasingly incorporating AI proficiency into employee performance reviews, turning AI literacy from a desirable skill into something that can influence how workers are evaluated. Business Insider reports that employers are experimenting with different ways of measuring how effectively employees use AI, as companies face pressure to demonstrate that their large investments in AI are actually improving productivity. At Gusto, for example, employees are categorized on an AI-fluency scale ranging from “observers” to “amplifiers,” based on how they use and contribute to AI-enabled work.
The approach is also appearing at larger companies. Meta and Accenture are among organizations incorporating AI-related impact or expectations into performance management. Meta announced that “AI-driven impact” would become a core expectation, while Accenture has pushed employees to put its extensive AI training into practice. The shift reflects a broader change in what employers consider valuable: employees are increasingly expected not merely to know how AI works, but to use it to improve productivity, solve problems and create measurable business results.
However, measuring AI use is proving difficult. Counting how many times someone uses an AI tool—or creating leaderboards based on usage—doesn't necessarily show that the employee is producing better work. Excessive or poorly structured AI use can even create problems such as low-quality “workslop,” security risks and unnecessary experimentation. Business Insider notes that companies are therefore struggling to develop standardized metrics for AI proficiency, with questions around fairness, context and whether employees should be rewarded for using AI or for the outcomes they achieve with it.
The bigger shift is that AI fluency may become part of professional competence itself. The strongest evaluation systems are likely to look beyond prompt volume and instead assess judgment, adaptability, problem-solving, responsible AI use and the ability to teach others. This is particularly important because AI is changing not only what employees produce but also how work is organized.
