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There are a few workplace topics that consistently bring out strong feelings, and performance reviews is at the top of that list. While most people would agree that its a good thing to have a tool to measure how employees are doing at their jobs, and a time for managers to discuss career advancement, very few seem to think that the way performance reviews are currently set up is working. In fact, a Gallup survey last year found that only 2% of human resource officers at major companies think their performance management system is working and just 22% of workers felt their review process was “fair and transparent.” One of the biggest complaints employees have about performance reviews is that they are so subjective. What it takes to be considered good at your job or eligible for a raise or promotion is often down to the opinions of just a couple of people. That means its a fertile ground for bias.So, if both employees and leadership think performance reviews are broken, could artificial intelligence be the magic bullet that fixes it? The new crop of startups selling AI-powered performance management tools certainly thinks so. But is it just swapping human bias for AI bias? Is something as nebulous as being “good at your job” quantifiable? And are humans ready to be evaluated by a robot? On the latest episode of The New Way We Work, I spoke to Bryan Ackerman, head of AI strategy and transformation at the management consulting firm Korn Ferry. He explained the benefits and drawbacks of using technology in both performance reviews and layoffs. Ackerman says that when considering introducing AI into performance reviews its important to start by asking the right questions: What is the fundamental thing we’re trying to change? There are lots of pain points with performance reviews, but AI isnt suited to fix them all. Here’s what it can do. How AI can help the performance review process Efficiency: One of the most straightforward ways that AI can help improve the performance review process is efficiency. Ackerman notes that managers can use generative AI to help draft reviews from their notes, but its only good as a starting point. Since the manager still needs to edit the draft to make it meaningful, that can end up not really saving any time.On both the employees and manager side, AI is good at putting in data and quantifying it (for example sales numbers) but again, its subject to the quality and accessibility of that kind of data. Making reviews more understandable: One of the biggest issues with performance reviews is how subjective and arbitrary ranking systems feel. Ackerman says there’s potential for AI to help employers to standardize and be more transparent about rankings and use AI note taking apps to help serve as a jumping-off point for conversions. Assistance with career development: Ackerman thinks the most useful way that AI could help in performance reviews is by using it as a way to get reviews back to their original intention: as a career development tool. AI has the potential to help managers deliver better and more effective feedback, he says. What AI cant help with There are pitfalls to using AI in performance reviews, Ackerman says, especially if you’re relying on it too heavily. It can give you too much data to work with, or create more of a problem than it solves, if the data quality isn’t great, he says. The question [is] are we making a manager’s life easier or harder?Relying blindly on AI also has the potential to exacerbate the problems with performance reviews. Is adding more data into the mix, making this process easier and more efficient and more consistent and safer and [with] less bias? Or is it just adding complexity that then the manager is somehow supposed to still make sense around? he says.The bottom line is to not remove the human conversation and nuance from the process and instead use AI as a tool to help where it can.Listen to the full episode for more on the pros and cons of introducing AI into the review process, where he thinks things are going in the next few years, and if AI will be used in layoff decisions. You can listen and subscribe to The New Way We Work on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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E-Commerce
After 23 years as part of advertising and marketing services holding company IPG, creative agency R/GA bought back its independence through a new partnership between R/GAs global management and private equity firm Truelink Capital. It marks the official announcement of a move reported by AdAge earlier this month, and after leaks about a potential sale emerged last summer. The management team leading the agency back to private business is headed by R/GAs global CEO, Robin Forbes, and chair and global chief creative officer Tiffany Rolfe. Truelink Capital is also an investor in marketing tech companies Flipp and Ansira, as well as experiential marketing firm GES. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. R/GAs current major global clients still include Google, Samsung, Moncler, TurboTax, Nike, and Eli Lilly. The move comes as IPG awaits approval of its merger with fellow public holding company Omnicom, which would create the worlds largest advertising services firm. R/GAs new partners at Truelink have established a $50 million Innovation Fund for a boost in new skill sets and talent, as well as acquisitions for new capabilities, emerging tools, and platforms. The agency is also establishing a Strategic Advisory Council of senior marketing and technology executives to support emerging AI client transformation opportunities across multiple sectors. Forbes and Rolfe spoke exclusively to Fast Company about the deal and what it means for the agency. Both focused on the age-old industry debate between the freedom and flexibility to innovate in independence versus ultimately being a cog in a much larger publicly traded machine. It made sense that, for the kind of company that we are, we needed to ensure we can change how we work and the model that we deliver to clients with more autonomy, says Rolfe. To really look at a longer horizon for how we think about our business. R/GA made its name and reputation through its innovative work for brands during the first digital revolution, and Forbes and Rolfe say this new iteration of the agency is aiming to use that DNA to forge its future in the AI age. The company has been investing in AI-related tech for the past decade, particularly through its venture arm with companies like Reply.ai and Clarifai. This moment is for us to really accelerate the evolution that we’ve been working on for some time of both the services that we offer, but also the way we’re doing our work, says Forbes. A new day one Its no secret that over the past few years, IPGs digital agencies, including R/GA, have struggled financially. As other holding companies have done in recent years IPG has sold and consolidated many of its agency holdings. Last year, it sold once-hot agency Huge to private equity firm AEA Investors, and sold agencies Deutsch New York and Hill Holliday to Attivo Group. R/GA has faced multiple layoff rounds and executive departures in recent years, after two decades of leading in digital advertising and brand work. Among many other things, this is the shop that created Nike Plus (2006), the viral Straight Outta Compton campaign for Beats By Dre (2015), and won the Super Bowl for Reddit with a five-second ad (2021). There is no single reason that the agency was considered extraneous by IPG, but the leak of an impending sale last summer actually created a silver lining for Forbes, Rolfe, and the rest of the leadership. The process of buying back the agency could be done in public, and they could talk to clients about the implications and opportunities out in the open. The response from both its employees and clients was positive, which gave the team confidence and momentum in speaking to potential suitors. Now, Rolfe says that this is like a new day one for the agency that provides the opportunity to become a 48-year-old startup. We have the legacy of experience and knowledge, but now we get a little bit of a refresh, she says. There’s this moment now where you can disrupt the idea that you have to be this big, scaled holding company size to address Fortune 500 clients. Or if you look at startups, what are many missing? What can’t they do? And I think we have enough scale but can still be agile. We have real deep experience with Fortune 500 types of scaled problems, and we can address that and build teams in a really modern agile way that allows us to address a lot of different needs. New venture In any instance where a company embarks on a major shift like this, you will hear words like reinvention, reinvigoration, and the like. But what makes this more tangibly intriguing is the $50 million fund the agency has to work with to actually put concrete moves behind those words. Forbes says the focus of the fund is on three distinct areas. First, new hiring and training in order to upskill its talent base and augmenting its current talent with new kinds of skill sets. Second, product development in the form of blueprints or accelerators for improved and innovative work, that can result in IP and other assets. And third, building in new capabilities through acquisition. We’re really excited about the concrete commitments to actually deploying capital in the business to accelerate this growth and this transformation mission that we’re on, says Forbes. It’s extra fuel to accelerate some of the things that we’ve been wanting to do, and feel are really important to do quickly.
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E-Commerce
Walt Disneys new headquarters in New York is like a city contained within a single block. By the end of this summer, around 5,000 people will work from within the stately 1.2-million-square-foot skyscraper, and the company ambitiously designed it to create a sense of flexibility and appeal for every single one of them. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Thats a tall order, because the entertainment corporations portfolio is more diverse than ever. Today Disneys work includes studio films and theme parks, but also broadcast news, radio, podcasts, streaming, digital media, and magazines. The media roster, largely based in New York, includes ABC News, ESPN, Hulu, and talk shows like The View, Live with Kelly and Mark, and the Tamron Hall Show. The brands were previously spread across multiple buildings in Manhattan and are now all relocating to the new building. So instead of referencing Disneys cinematic archives (which made sense when creating a workplace for Imagineers) the design firms behind the buildingSOM on architecture, Gensler on interiors, and SCAPE on the outdoor areaslooked to the core of its business in New York and designed a building that can move right alongside the fast-evolving nature of media. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Compared to Burbank and Orlando, New York Disney culture is so driven by news and sports and information as opposed to entertainment, says Colin Koop, a partner at SOM. The feeling of this building is meant to bring a cohesive culture across many business segments. To that end, SOM and Gensler designed the building to be durable enough, aesthetically and functionally, to house all of its New York operations under one roof now and in the future. They created a space where everyone, no matter if they are an assistant on a radio show or a gaffer on a broadcast set or a developer on a streaming service, can do their best work. Disney has a history of flexing its ambition through architecture. The elegance of 7 Hudson Squarealso known as the Robert A. Iger buildingmight be surprising in comparison to the companys previous corporate image, which leaned heavily into fantasy. In the 1980s and 1990s, under the leadership of then-CEO Michael Eisner, it practically collected postmodernist buildings by the eras heavy hitters. Remember how Michael Graves used 19-foot-tall statues of the Seven Dwarfs as columns? Or Arata Isozakis homage to Mickeys ears? Disneys corporate strategy, which involved a web of interconnected platforms centered around its films, has diversified quite a bit since the early 1990s when those buildings were commissioned (and when the media landscape was much simpler than it is now). [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] LESS GLASS, MORE PERSONALITY For a long time, New Yorks 21st-century energy-efficient buildings have shared a similar look: those ubiquitous mirror-like glass facades, like the towers in Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center. However, on the outside, Disneys headquarterswhich is sheathed in viridian terra-cotta tiles and bird safe glassis a spiritual descendant of sophisticated, materially rich, and lustrous Art Deco designs like the peacock-green McGraw Hill building. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Because of zoning and setback laws, the building actually looks like a collection of gridded towers. The 22-story structure has bronze-framed windows at street level and polished champagne brass awnings and decorative elements over its entrancesmaterials that resonate with the surrounding context without replicating it, says Colin Koop, a partner at SOM, one of the firms behind the building. There are restaurant and retail storefronts on the street level (which is rare for a corporate headquarters to have); offices, newsrooms, and a screening theater in the floors above; and three live-audience studios down below. When did the building open? While the street view of the building is impotant, its also impressive under the hood. Disneys HQ is one of the first large-scale projects to be completed since New York passed Local Law 97, a policy that requires buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The building is all electricthe most noticeable difference between a conventional structure is there is no cooking gas for the kitchens and restaurantsand received a LEED Platinum rating thanks to a suite of features like rooftop solar panels, windows outfitted with automated daylight sensors that adjust their tint (which helps reduce heat gain), and a direct outside air system and heat pumps for ventilation, which is more energy efficient than a standard HVAC setup. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] That cocktail of systems is becoming very widely adopted now, Koop says. (A bike room with showers also helps employees choose low-carbon transit to work.) While the building is bright and light inside, windows compose less than 50% of the facade, another move that helps reduce energy use. Every developer and broker will tell you that tenants only want a glass building, Koop says. I enjoy an all-glass view as much as the next person, but I do think that you can create that sense of openness in different ways. For example, the company decided to keep conference rooms and private offices toward the core of the building, and workstations and lounges near the windows, so light is more free-flowing and equitably distributed. That energy efficiency also helps if theres an extreme weather event that cuts off power to the building. It can run off the grid for days thanks to multiple generators on the roofa necessary feature because of the newsrooms in the building. There’s a tremendous amount of resiliency in this building, Koop says. It cannot go black ever. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] CAMERA READY FOR ANYTHING The broadcast and production needs, which are the most technically complex of all the teams that will use the building, determined a significant part of the structures engineering. In order to achieve the vast, column-free spaces necessary for the studios located in the basement, SOM suspended the core of the sublevels, which are located beneath the nearby Holland Tunnel and subway lines, from a truss on the second storey. This building is like an iceberg, Koop says. Because of the site, the broadcast architecture required extensive soundproofing and vibration insulation. A band could perform in each of the three 20,000-square-foot studios at the same time and the audience wouldnt be able to hear whats happening in the adjacent space. The studios’ sets themselves are essentially giant LED screens, which enables producers to change up the look and feel without a full build-out. One central control studio manages the setsa practical and resource-saving move. [Photo: Garrett Rowland/Disney] You can get production moving faster with more variety in any form you want, says Stephen Newbold, an architect at Gensler who specializes in design for the entertainment and media industries and spearheaded the broadcast architecture and interiors. This approach is a departure from a legacy where each show operated like little islands with its own studio and set of technology, Newbold adds. We can’t do that in today’s media world. Everything’s got to connect. Everything’s got to be agile. The design teams had to create an additional, separate entrance for the studios 600 daily talk show attendees as well. The audience entry point leads to waiting zones inside the building where people can queue up instead of crowding the sidewalkanother detail that helps the building remain respectful to the street life in Hudson Square, which is a growing tech district. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] SOM and Gensler also emphasized wide-open spaces on the newsroom floors, which, like the underground production studios, have a rather acrobatic structural support system. There, the radio station WABC and broadcast show ABC News will operate from a centralized area. That enables us to not only deliver in todays increasingly more complex news environment, but also equips us to evolve with future advancements in technology, new formats, and the continued transformation of our business, says Debra OConnell, the president of ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] Shape-shifting on demand Flexibility extends elsewhere in the building. The buildings 300-seat theater can be pitch-black for film screenings, or Disney can slide open shades to let daylight in during a long lecture or meeting. Similarly, the Great Halla communal town-square-like space on a centralized amenity floor that includes a private Starbucks, cafeteria, Disney store, and a librarycan be cleared out for events and parties. Its supposed to have 10 lives in every day, says Johnathan Sandler, a principal at Gensler. The same is true for the offices, meeting rooms, and phone rooms, which are all outfitted with tools for remote conferencing. With just a change of furniture, every conference room could be an office and every office could be a conference room as the business needs change. The design team has already tested this flexibility. The ratio of phone rooms jumped 20% because of the pandemic. The expectation now is that almost any meeting, even if it’s in person, is going to have some virtual participant joining, Sandler says, noting that as more teams move into the building, they continue to fine-tune the mix. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney] As in many new offices today, part of the reason for a wide array of interior spaces is to also allow people on-site to have more choice in where they work. This wasnt the case in Disneys New York buildings before. Meanwhile, the amenities on offer werent consistent, particularly for people with production roles. It was very important to make sure that everyone, regardless of who you were or what you were doing in the building, had this really superlative experience, Sandler says. It doesn’t have to be just based on your function. A lot of it’s just based on your personality. The hope is really that people will treat this as a vertical campus. [Photo: Dave Burk/Disney]
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E-Commerce
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