The hype around so-called \u201cpeanut butter\u201d raises that distribute equal payments to every worker is falling flat as AI divides the workplace into super users and stragglers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Companies have given out raises based on performance for years, but studies from earlier this year suggested this trend was shifting. About 44% of employers said they either planned to or were considering giving out equal raises to their employees this year, according to one study<\/a> by compensation software company Payscale.<\/p>\n Yet, a new report<\/a> by consulting firm Mercer shows this trend hasn\u2019t actually panned out. Only about 4% of employers in the U.S. are giving out raises in this way, according to a recent survey by consulting firm Mercer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Part of the reason why, may be AI\u2019s influence on a rapidly changing workplace. Just under 60% of business leaders say technology is key to their business strategy, according to a recent report<\/a> by the advisory, tax, and assurance firm Baker Tilly, and some companies have pushed employees to fall in line.<\/p>\n Google<\/a> has begun incorporating AI usage into performance reviews for software engineers, though managers have discretion over how it is measured, The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> earlier this year. Meanwhile, Accenture<\/a> CEO Julie Sweet said last month<\/a> that AI fluency is required for workers to be promoted.<\/p>\n Still, some white collar employees are resisting. A global survey of more than 3,700 executives and employees by SAP<\/a> subsidiary WalkMe found that 54% of workers<\/a> were bypassing their company\u2019s AI tools to do their work manually, while another third said they hesitated to use AI because it makes their work more complicated.<\/p>\n And yet, another group of workers has responded to management\u2019s push for AI adoption by going all in. These AI \u201csuper users<\/a>\u201d were three times more likely to have received a promotion and a pay raise in the past year, Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, previously said in a statement to Fortune<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This disparity between employees challenges the idea behind \u201cpeanut butter raises,\u201d which aim to address some of the criticisms with merit raises, namely, that they are subjective and bias-prone, according to Payscale\u2019s report.<\/p>\n While across-the-board raises may seem equal on the surface, high performers or AI super users may not see it that way, said Hannah Yardley, the chief people and culture officer at Achievers, a software company that tracks employee recognition and offers rewards.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re just being rewarded the same way as everybody else, or being told you\u2019re doing the same job with everyone else, you\u2019re going to feel that it\u2019s equal, but not fair, if you\u2019re contributing more to to the outcomes of what you\u2019ve been asked,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Factors like performance, but also market competitiveness and internal equity also play an important role in pay decisions, added Mercer senior principal Mark Bowling.<\/p>\n \u201cFairness in compensation often involves more than equal treatment,\u201d he told Fortune.<\/p>\n Because not all employee contributions are equal, organizations wanting to leverage AI should institute performance-based raises, but they should also be constantly recognizing employees that go above and beyond so others in the organization know what the company\u2019s priorities are, Yardley said.<\/p>\n \u201cNot all work is created equal, and so for organizations, they should be differentiating in order to be able to set that standard for what value really means in the way that you\u2019re delivering,\u201d she told Fortune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hype around so-called \u201cpeanut butter\u201d raises that distribute equal payments to every worker is falling flat as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,2938,12393,25,743,1297,781,2943],"class_list":["post-32991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-american-workers","tag-american-workforce","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-layoffs","tag-tech","tag-u-s-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}