--- title: "AI for Performance Reviews: Why Upward365 Won’t Write Them" description: Using AI for performance reviews? Upward365 uses AI to collate a year of context so managers can focus on the person. It never writes the review. Here’s why. image: https://upward365.com/hubfs/blog/shutterstock_2643127663.jpg --- [+1 (888) 210-1218](tel:18882101218) [Login](https://app.upward365.com/login) [![upward 365 logo](https://upward365.com/hubfs/logos/upward365-logo%20(1).svg "upward 365 logo")](https://upward365.com/) [![upward365 favicon](https://upward365.com/hubfs/logos/upward365-favicon.svg "upward365 favicon")](https://upward365.com/) - [Platform Overview](https://upward365.com/how-it-works) - [How it Works](https://upward365.com/how-it-works) - [Performance Management](https://upward365.com/performance-management) - [Employee Engagement](https://upward365.com/employee-engagement) - [Features & Benefits](https://upward365.com/features-and-benefits) - [Compare Platforms](https://upward365.com/compare) - [Why Upward365](https://upward365.com/about-us) - [Our Philosophy](https://upward365.com/about-us/our-philosophy) - [About](https://upward365.com/about-us) - [Customer Stories](https://upward365.com/about-us#customer_stories) - [Contact Us](https://upward365.com/contact-us) - [Resources](https://upward365.com/blog) - [Resource Library](https://upward365.com/resource-library) - [Blog](https://upward365.com/blog) - [FAQs](https://upward365.com/faqs) - [Glossary](https://upward365.com/glossary) - [Pricing](https://upward365.com/pricing) [Book a Demo](https://upward365.com/demo) [Book a Demo](https://upward365.com/demo) [Book a Demo](https://upward365.com/demo) - [Platform Overview](https://upward365.com/how-it-works) - [How it Works](https://upward365.com/how-it-works) - [Performance Management](https://upward365.com/performance-management) - [Employee Engagement](https://upward365.com/employee-engagement) - [Features & Benefits](https://upward365.com/features-and-benefits) - [Compare Platforms](https://upward365.com/compare) - [Why Upward365](https://upward365.com/about-us) - [Our Philosophy](https://upward365.com/about-us/our-philosophy) - [About](https://upward365.com/about-us) - [Customer Stories](https://upward365.com/about-us#customer_stories) - [Contact Us](https://upward365.com/contact-us) - [Resources](https://upward365.com/blog) - [Resource Library](https://upward365.com/resource-library) - [Blog](https://upward365.com/blog) - [FAQs](https://upward365.com/faqs) - [Glossary](https://upward365.com/glossary) - [Pricing](https://upward365.com/pricing) [Book a Demo](https://upward365.com/demo) [Performance Management](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/performance-management)[AI & Technology](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/ai-technology) # We Use AI So Managers Don't Have to Dig Through the File Cabinet. We Don't Use It to Write Reviews. Short answer: Upward365 uses AI in performance reviews to organize and present what is on file, and coming soon, to build custom reports from your data and to review what managers wrote. It does not write reviews or comments about people. Judgment about a person stays with the manager. California's [SB 947](https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/california-just-banned-employers-from-letting-ai-fire-workers-on-its-own) sets a related rule: a person, not a system, has to own decisions to discipline or fire. Our [performance management page](https://upward365.com/performance-management) shows how Upward365 keeps that judgment with the manager. When AI writes the judgment, the review becomes the manager's signature on something they did not write. [If AI writes the review, whose judgment is the employee reading? Let software gather the year and leave the call to the manager.](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//upward365.com/blog/how-upward365-uses-ai) ## AI in performance reviews works best on the file-cabinet work Ask any manager what makes review season miserable. The answer is rarely the conversation. It is the digging: twelve months of 1:1 notes in three places, recognition from a meeting nobody wrote down, a project from March that nobody remembers clearly in December. [Notes and Briefings](https://upward365.com/features-and-benefits) exist to catch that work as it happens. That digging is collating and compiling. It is finding the thing you know is on file somewhere. Software handles that well. Managers handle it slowly, because review season lands on top of their real work. See [how it works](https://upward365.com/how-it-works). So that is where Upward365 puts AI. It takes the file-cabinet work off the manager's desk and leaves the thinking where it belongs. The longer version of that stance lives on [Our Philosophy](https://upward365.com/about-us/our-philosophy). **Q: What does AI do in Upward365?** A: Upward365 uses AI for transactional work in performance management: collating notes and compiling what a manager already recorded. Today it sits in the AI-Enabled section of the History Hub overlay. Coming soon, AI will build custom reports from Upward365 data and review manager comments. It will not write reviews or comments about employees. Those stay with the manager. ## Judgment about a person stays with a person What software handles badly is deciding what a year of someone's work meant. A review is one person's considered judgment about another person's contribution, growth, and future. It carries context no system has: what the team was dealing with, what was asked of this person that was not asked of others, how they work when things go wrong. [Flight Checks](https://upward365.com/features-and-benefits) keep that context alive between cycles. When AI writes that judgment, the review becomes the manager's signature on something they did not write. California Senator McNerney, the author of SB 947, put the principle plainly: *"AI must remain a tool controlled by humans, not the other way around"* ([HR Dive, 10/01/2026](https://www.hrdive.com/news/california-revamps-ai-protections-for-workers-in-flurry-of-bill-signings/831949/)). Upward365's AI does not write reviews. It does not write comments about employees. Managers write those, with a year of context in front of them, as described on the [performance management page](https://upward365.com/performance-management). ## Five reasons an AI-written review is a worse review 1. **The manager stops owning it.** A review is a record with a name on it. When software drafts the judgment and the manager edits, the manager is defending conclusions they did not reach. That shows up in the conversation, when the employee asks “why” and the answer is thin. 2. **Every review starts to sound the same.** Language models write toward the most likely sentence. Across a team, that turns into reviews built from the same phrases, and phrases that could describe anyone tell an employee nothing about their own year. 3. **It repeats the pattern instead of the person.** A model drafting from past reviews and notes carries forward whatever was in them, including the habits of the managers who wrote them. A person reading the year can notice when the record is unfair. A draft built from the record cannot. 4. **Employees can tell.** People read their reviews closely. A review that feels generated tells them their manager did not spend the time, and that costs more trust than a late review does. 5. **The record stops being independent.** Laws like California’s SB 947 lean on supervisor evaluations as one of the things a person checks an automated decision against. If AI wrote the evaluation, the check runs in a circle: software corroborating software. None of these problems come from AI being bad at writing. They come from AI writing the wrong thing. The [performance management page](https://upward365.com/performance-management) shows what we have it do instead. ## The History Hub overlay puts the year in front of the manager In practice, this lives in the History Hub. Every note, Uplift, goal update, and check-in from the year lives in one place on the employee's profile. When review time comes, managers read instead of remember. AI-Enabled context, recency bias out of the equation. When a manager opens a review, the overlay brings forward Notes, Uplifts, Flight Checks, past reviews, and peer feedback. See the full list on [Features and Benefits](https://upward365.com/features-and-benefits). The manager reads, thinks, and writes. The software made sure the year was there to read. [How it works](https://upward365.com/how-it-works) walks through the flow. That is also why annual reviews work better in Upward365, not worse. The annual review is the right moment to step back and assess a year. It needs the year captured first, which is what [year-round context](https://upward365.com/performance-management) means in practice. [The best use of AI in review season is the digging nobody has time for, not the judgment nobody else can make.](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A//upward365.com/blog/how-upward365-uses-ai) ## States are writing a similar line into law for discipline and termination On September 30, 2026, California signed [SB 947](https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/california-just-banned-employers-from-letting-ai-fire-workers-on-its-own), the No Robo Bosses Act. Starting July 1, 2027, an employer cannot rely solely on an automated decision system to discipline or fire an employee. When a system is the primary basis for that decision, a person has to corroborate it against other information, which the statute says can include supervisor evaluations, personnel files, work product, and peer reviews. The employee also gets written notice. Colorado's [SB 26-189](https://www.ebglaw.com/workforce-bulletin/inside-colorados-senate-bill-26-189-impacts-and-implications-for-employers) starts January 1, 2027. It gives people affected by a consequential decision, employment included, a path to meaningful human review where commercially reasonable. The Attorney General's office closed public comment on its draft rules on October 26, 2026, and final rules have not been adopted yet, so details can still move. The details differ by state. The direction does not: a person owns the decision, and there is a record behind it. We wrote about what California's law asks of performance records in [our SB 947 post](https://upward365.com/blog/california-sb-947-ai-hr-human-review). Upward365 was built around that principle before any of these laws passed. It is the same one on [Our Philosophy](https://upward365.com/about-us/our-philosophy). > ## Where Upward365’s AI goes next: custom reports and comment review > > Two AI features are on the Upward365 roadmap. Both are coming soon, and both stay on the same side of the line. > > **Custom reports, built from your data.** Today, a question like “which teams had the most missed check-ins before a dip in eNPS” usually means an export and an afternoon in a spreadsheet. AI-built reports will cut the data already in Upward365 to answer the question you asked, the way you need it presented. That is the file-cabinet work at the scale of a whole company. See the current [Reports](https://upward365.com/features-and-benefits) feature. > > **A second read on what managers wrote.** The comment review tool will check review comments and narratives for compliance, rate them, and offer modest suggestions. Think of it as an HR partner reading over the manager’s shoulder, flagging a phrase that could read as biased or a rating the comments do not support. The manager wrote it, the manager decides what to change, and the AI does not write the review for them. > > Reports organize the data. Comment review checks the writing. Neither one decides what a year of someone’s work meant. ## Upward365 is built for better reviews, not faster paragraphs Some review software is built to hand a manager a finished paragraph and ask for edits. [Our Philosophy](https://upward365.com/about-us/our-philosophy) explains why we went the other way. If the goal is fewer minutes per review because software wrote it, Upward365 will feel slower than you expect. If the goal is a review the manager stands behind because the whole year was in front of them, that is the product. When you need a person, a real person who knows your account answers, often the same day. [Book a Demo](https://upward365.com/demo) and ask for the support team by name. --- *This article is general information, not legal advice. It was accurate as of 10/30/2026. Legislation, effective dates, and regulations change, and Colorado's rules under SB 26-189 are still being written, so check the current status before acting on anything here. How any law applies depends on your situation. Talk to employment counsel before changing your policies.* [![Management IQ Assessment Blog CTA v1](https://hubspot-no-cache-na2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/cta/default/243304513/interactive-365060707017.png)](https://upward365.com/hs/cta/wi/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLKEp7EqYTJn7vdIQyXOozebITCK5G4iWTVAFzSVOgk4s4z9pED494XDH4zC1cR2UgRqtHyxo1LQqQNg4RTIq7nSwUuWU%2F9jq9rAfsRIWrrjiy1cCI%2FRir0aLshLlWaMWEIQd9iQe2qHXGqAWvwMUSjv8I%2BEui%2BIXhgZweW6zJxnC0%2BF5bKI6EgU5KHS%2BDb2aVJnA9iaS%2FVRSKKXFIRY%2BZg%3D&webInteractiveContentId=365060707017&portalId=243304513) ## Frequently Asked Questions Does Upward365 use AI to write performance reviews? No. Upward365 uses AI to collate and surface the context managers captured during the year, such as Notes, Uplifts, and Flight Checks. Managers write the reviews and comments themselves. The AI-Enabled section of the History Hub overlay is the only live AI feature today. AI-built custom reports and a comment review tool are coming soon. No Upward365 AI feature writes reviews or comments about people. How does Upward365 help a manager prepare for a performance review? Upward365 keeps a year of context in one place. Notes, Uplifts, Flight Checks, Briefings, past reviews, and peer feedback appear in the History Hub overlay when the manager opens a review. The manager reads the year, then writes the review. A demo shows the overlay with a year of sample context in it. Why doesn't Upward365 let AI write reviews? A review is a manager's judgment about a person. Software can gather the year, but it cannot weigh it the way the manager can. Upward365 keeps that call with the manager. State laws on AI-driven discipline and termination, including California's SB 947, point in the same direction. Employers should check specifics with counsel. What AI features are coming to Upward365? Two are on the roadmap. AI-built custom reports will turn the performance and engagement data in Upward365 into reports shaped to the question being asked. A comment review tool will check what managers wrote for compliance, rate it, and suggest modest changes. In both cases the manager still writes the review. Can AI help managers write performance reviews? AI can help managers prepare for performance reviews by collating notes and compiling what was recorded during the year. Upward365 uses AI this way and does not use it to write reviews or comments about employees. The manager writes the review, with a year of context in front of them. How should you use AI for performance reviews? Use AI for performance reviews on the file-cabinet work: finding, collating, and surfacing what managers already recorded. Keep judgment about a person with the manager. Upward365 puts AI in the History Hub overlay so the year is in front of the manager when the review opens. What AI tools help automate performance reviews? Some review software drafts a finished paragraph for the manager to edit. Upward365 automates the gathering instead, surfacing Notes, Uplifts, Flight Checks, past reviews, and peer feedback in the History Hub overlay. AI-built custom reports and a comment review tool are coming soon. None of these features write the review. How can AI support less biased performance reviews? AI can support less biased performance reviews by reading what a manager wrote and flagging phrases that could read as biased or ratings the comments do not support. Upward365's comment review tool, coming soon, works this way. The manager decides what to change, and the AI does not write the review. - Recent - Topics Recent Topics - [Performance Management (38)](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/performance-management) - [Employee Engagement & Culture (27)](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/employee-engagement-culture) - [AI & Technology (15)](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/ai-technology) - [Customer Success & Service Excellence (8)](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/customer-success-service-excellence) - [HR Compliance & Employment Law (1)](https://upward365.com/blog/tag/hr-compliance-employment-law) ### Subscribe by email Share this [Share on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://upward365.com/blog/how-upward365-uses-ai&t=AI+for+Performance+Reviews%3A+Why+Upward365+Won%26rsquo%3Bt+Write+Them) [Share on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://upward365.com/blog/how-upward365-uses-ai&t=AI+for+Performance+Reviews%3A+Why+Upward365+Won%26rsquo%3Bt+Write+Them) [![Dave Arringdale, Co-Founder at Upward365](https://upward365.com/hubfs/landing%20page%20assets/dave-arringdale-headshot.webp)](https://upward365.com/blog/author/dave-arringdale) ### [Dave Arringdale, Co-Founder at Upward365](https://upward365.com/blog/author/dave-arringdale) Dave Arringdale is the Co-Founder of Upward365, a performance management and employee engagement platform built specifically for the underserved small to mid-sized business (SMB) market. His expertise is built on over 15 years in the performance management industry, during which he served over 1,500 companies through his previous venture, ReviewSnap, which he successfully co-founded and led as CEO. [Connect on LinkedIn →](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-arringdale-6b3b3140/) Previous post [← Minnesota Considered an AI Layoff Notice Law This Year. 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Managers write the reviews and comments themselves. The AI-Enabled section of the History Hub overlay is the only live AI feature today. AI-built custom reports and a comment review tool are coming soon. No Upward365 AI feature writes reviews or comments about people." }, "name" : "Does Upward365 use AI to write performance reviews?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Upward365 keeps a year of context in one place. Notes, Uplifts, Flight Checks, Briefings, past reviews, and peer feedback appear in the History Hub overlay when the manager opens a review. The manager reads the year, then writes the review. A demo shows the overlay with a year of sample context in it." }, "name" : "How does Upward365 help a manager prepare for a performance review?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "A review is a manager's judgment about a person. Software can gather the year, but it cannot weigh it the way the manager can. Upward365 keeps that call with the manager. State laws on AI-driven discipline and termination, including California's SB 947, point in the same direction. Employers should check specifics with counsel." }, "name" : "Why doesn't Upward365 let AI write reviews?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Two are on the roadmap. AI-built custom reports will turn the performance and engagement data in Upward365 into reports shaped to the question being asked. A comment review tool will check what managers wrote for compliance, rate it, and suggest modest changes. In both cases the manager still writes the review." }, "name" : "What AI features are coming to Upward365?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "AI can help managers prepare for performance reviews by collating notes and compiling what was recorded during the year. Upward365 uses AI this way and does not use it to write reviews or comments about employees. The manager writes the review, with a year of context in front of them." }, "name" : "Can AI help managers write performance reviews?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Use AI for performance reviews on the file-cabinet work: finding, collating, and surfacing what managers already recorded. Keep judgment about a person with the manager. Upward365 puts AI in the History Hub overlay so the year is in front of the manager when the review opens." }, "name" : "How should you use AI for performance reviews?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Some review software drafts a finished paragraph for the manager to edit. Upward365 automates the gathering instead, surfacing Notes, Uplifts, Flight Checks, past reviews, and peer feedback in the History Hub overlay. AI-built custom reports and a comment review tool are coming soon. None of these features write the review." }, "name" : "What AI tools help automate performance reviews?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "AI can support less biased performance reviews by reading what a manager wrote and flagging phrases that could read as biased or ratings the comments do not support. Upward365's comment review tool, coming soon, works this way. The manager decides what to change, and the AI does not write the review." }, "name" : "How can AI support less biased performance reviews?" } ] } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Dave Arringdale, Co-Founder at Upward365", "url" : "https://upward365.com/blog/author/dave-arringdale" }, "dateModified" : "2026-11-05T22:50:09.678Z", "datePublished" : "2026-11-05T22:50:09.000Z", "headline" : "AI for Performance Reviews: Why Upward365 Won’t Write Them", "image" : [ "https://upward365.com/hubfs/blog/shutterstock_2643127663.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://upward365.com/blog/how-upward365-uses-ai", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://upward365.com/hubfs/logos/upward365-logo%20(1).svg" } } } ```