Meta is about to start grading workers on their AI skills

• Meta will assess employee performance by AI-driven impact starting in 2026.
• The company is shifting toward an AI-native culture and incentivizing AI adoption through rewards.
• Meta is also rolling out an AI tool to assist employees in writing performance reviews.

Meta will tie employees’ performance to their “AI-driven impact” starting next year.

The social media giant is making “AI-driven impact” a “core expectation” from 2026, Janelle Gale, Meta’s head of people, told employees Thursday in an internal memo, which was seen by Business Insider.

Meta will assess employees on how they use AI to deliver results and build tools that can move the needle in a major way when it comes to productivity.

Individual AI usage and adoption metrics won’t be included in 2025’s annual performance reviews, according to the memo, though workers should include their AI-fueled wins in their self-reviews.

“It’s well-known that this is a priority, and we’re focused on using AI to help employees with their day-to-day work,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.

The move marks a broader shift within corporate America toward an AI-native culture. Big Tech firms, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, are pushing employees to do more with AI. The directives given to workers have been unified and clear: using it is “no longer optional,” as one Microsoft executive put it to managers in June. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had a similar message for employees in a July all-hands meeting, telling employees they need to use it for Google to lead the AI race.

Earlier this year, Meta overhauled its hiring process by allowing job applicants to use AI in coding interviews. It also launched an internal game called “Level Up” to incentivize AI adoption, and now it’s willing to reward workers who use AI to drive meaningful outcomes.

“As we move toward an AI-native future, we want to recognize people who are helping us get there faster,” Gale wrote in the memo. “For 2025, we’ll reward those who made exceptional AI-driven impact, either in their own work or by improving their team’s performance.”

Meta is also overhauling how workers write performance reviews and feedback by rolling out an “AI Performance Assistant” to use in this year’s performance review cycle, which begins on December 8, according to the memo.

Gale wrote that employees can use its internal AI assistant Metamate, as well as Google’s Gemini, for their performance content.

Employees have already been using Meta’s internal AI bot to help write performance reviews, Business Insider previously reported.

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