Wall Street bosses turn to AI for appraisals

Banks have already turned to AI for derivatives trading and fraud detection. Now they want to use it for the annual review process.

That's according to Workday, one of the world's largest providers of HR software. The firm in September rolled out a bevy of new products that rely on artificial intelligence to write job descriptions or aid managers in writing up annual reviews of workers' performance.

Banks have expressed interest in those products, according to Carl Eschenbach, co-chief executive officer of Workday. It's all part of their efforts to streamline operations and cut costs, he said. The offering will become available in the coming months.


"You have 100 employees and it takes seven hours to write a job description, so 700 hours," Eschenbach said, using a hypothetical example during an interview with Bloomberg at a Workday conference in Barcelona. "Now it takes two minutes. You can do the math, you just saved all that. So that's a productivity gain. There's quantifiable impact you can have through the use of AI."

With a market capitalization of more than $60 billion, Workday makes human resources software that help companies with everything from maintaining payroll, tracking expenses, monitoring employee absences and managing job candidates.