Can AI call scores be used in performance reviews or termination decisions?
Treat AI output strictly as an input a manager reviews, never as the basis of a decision. That means the manager listens to the underlying calls, the documentation cites observed behavior rather than a score, the standard was written and shared in advance, and the employee had visibility and a way to dispute. Employment law varies by jurisdiction and some places have specific rules on automated decision-making, so confirm your approach with counsel.
The distinction that has to hold
There is a real difference between "the evaluation system flagged a pattern, a manager reviewed the calls, and the manager documented what she observed" and "the system scored this person low, so we acted." The first is a manager using better information. The second delegates a judgment about a person's livelihood to software.
The difference has to be true in practice, not just in the wording. If nobody actually listened to the calls, the first description is a story about the second.
Guardrails that make it defensible
- Written standard, shared first. The rubric exists in writing, the team has seen it, and it was in place before the period being evaluated. Standards introduced retroactively are indefensible regardless of who applied them.
- Employee visibility. Reps see their own scores and the evidence behind them continuously, not for the first time in a review meeting.
- A working dispute path. With recorded outcomes. Its existence is part of what makes the record credible.
- Human verification before any consequence. A manager listens to the specific calls and documents specific behavior, with the score as context rather than as the finding.
- Never the sole basis. Attendance, safety, customer outcomes, revenue and observed conduct all belong in the picture.
What to write down
Documentation that references behavior survives scrutiny. Documentation that references a number invites the question of how the number was produced, which shifts the conversation from the employee's conduct to the software's methodology.
"On these three calls the technician did not present options after diagnosing the problem, which we discussed on these dates" is a record about a person's work. "Rubric score below threshold for two months" is a record about a tool. Only one of those helps anyone, including the employee.
Say the quiet part to the team
Reps assume the worst about evaluation systems unless told otherwise, and their assumption is that a machine is deciding their future. Stating plainly that the system applies the standard consistently across every call, that a human reviews before anything happens, and that they can challenge any result removes most of the fear.
It also happens to be the only honest framing. The value of scoring every call rather than the few a supervisor had time for is coverage and fairness — the quiet reps get looked at too. That is the case for coaching at scale, and it is what your standards, evaluated by AI is meant to mean.
Topics: employment · performance management · coaching · documentation
Have a version of this question about your own business?
The useful answer usually depends on which systems you run and how they're connected. That's a conversation, not a blog post.