Key Takeaways

• Delta piloted Nadia to help with year-end performance reviews; the results speak for themselves: 96% of managers would recommend Nadia and 75% became return users. 
• Trained on Delta’s cultural “Rules of the Road,” Nadia delighted managers with a deep understanding of the organization.
• Delta is now expanding to use Nadia for goal setting, high-potential development, and coaching for frontline workers.

Performance reviews are important to the health of a company, but they can feel like the organizational equivalent of going to the gym. The exercise is valuable, but that doesn’t mean everyone wants to spend time doing it. 

For HR leaders, performance reviews are a marathon that requires a tremendous amount of project planning, internal communication, and time-consuming follow-ups to complete. And for employees, they’re a heavy lift that often ends up slipping further and further down the to-do list. That makes them one of the most valuable starting use cases for an AI coach. 

In May 2023, Delta piloted Nadia, Valence’s AI coach, to find ways to make performance reviews easier and the process more consistent. They not only found out how AI can cut pain out of the HR process—they discovered what’s possible when a purpose-built AI like Nadia knows your organization deeply. 

The value of performance reviews 

Delta has developed comprehensive and thoughtful “Rules of Road,” which document company values and best practices for developing great teams and managing performance. But when it came time to align managers around those principles as the annual performance review cycle kicked off, Delta HR was limited to sending documents and running webinars. Managers are busy, and these structured learning opportunities are only as effective as the number of people who engage.

Delta knows the value of a strong performance review cycle grounded in their cultural values and business goals. When managers apply Delta’s values and leadership principles to provide high-quality feedback, that feedback directly drives business performance. Nadia made it easier and faster for managers to draft their reviews. And by creating a more delightful experience for them, Delta saw higher completion rates and gathered a more consistent picture of performance across the organization.

“We made a strategic choice to start with areas where we could delight employees and drive productivity.… People were saying things like, ‘Not only did it coach me, it helped me create my goals. I’m already done.’”
‍
- Tim Gregory, Delta Airlines

Grounding Nadia in Delta’s culture

Tim Gregory, Delta’s Director of HR Innovation and Workforce Technology, led the pilot of Nadia. He aligned stakeholders from across Delta’s HR Centers of Excellence, IT, Legal, Compliance, and Procurement. This could seem like a daunting task, but because Nadia is enterprise-ready, GDPR and SOC 2 compliant, and built for data privacy and security, the partnership flourished quickly.

“Honestly, it was surprisingly easy. As complex as AI is under the hood, the process of taking our documents and working with Valence was simple. From signing the contract to rolling out the pilot—integrated with our Qualtrics system—it was five weeks total. That just doesn’t happen with enterprise rollouts.”

- Tim Gregory

Valence trained Nadia on Delta’s “Rules of the Road” and the full library of their professional development best practices. They then rolled it out to 300 managers. Nadia received a stellar 96% NPS score. More importantly, 75% of users came back for repeat sessions. “It’s one thing when people try something out of curiosity. It’s another when it drives real productivity—and they come back to it. That return rate told us we had something valuable,” explained Tim in a recent Valence webinar.

Nadia’s success in supporting Delta’s performance review cycle comes from the ability to learn and remember Delta’s company culture and then apply that knowledge consistently across coaching sessions with different managers. Instead of a generalized webinar from HR, managers got tailored advice from an AI coach that could help them draft better, more thoughtful reviews. 

And unlike general-purpose AI, as managers work with Nadia more over time, she is able to provide personalized coaching rooted in a real understanding of each person's immediate team. After feedback is delivered, Nadia can help craft personal goals and track progress against them based on individual growth areas identified in the review process. 

“Something like Copilot is good for quick, ungrounded tasks—but it doesn't know Delta. There's no button you press that says, ‘Take all our content and make sure it's used consistently.’ With Nadia, we took our best practices, encoded them, and it doesn’t forget. I can say, ‘Hey, we had a session two weeks ago—want to continue that conversation?’ That’s the difference.”

- Tim Gregory

This cultural grounding not only ensured consistent application of Delta’s best practices, it also drove engagement and trust in the tool. “When our folks were interacting with Nadia, it was able to retrieve all the grounded information related to Delta,” Tim said. “One of the things that really stood out was the almost shock—‘Wow, this actually knows us.”

From performance review pilot to full frontline rollout

Delta has expanded from performance reviews to use Nadia for year-round goal setting. As managers set goals for the year based on performance reviews, Nadia acts as first a thought partner and then an accountability buddy, helping managers set more effective goals aligned with the broader organizational strategy. And on the horizon, they’re exploring opportunities to support mid-year manager conversations, coach high-potential leaders, and help frontline managers interpret and act on engagement survey results.

“To say Nadia is catching on here at Delta would be an understatement. People are starting to think, ‘Can I use it for this? Can I use it for that?’ With something as big as AI, employees are asking, ‘When are we gonna be able to use it inside the enterprise?’ Our partnership with Valence allowed us to sort of catch that wave and respond to the needs of our employees.”

- Tim Gregory

For more on the Delta story, watch our webinar, “How Delta is Taking Managers to New Heights with AI Coaching” with Tim Gregory, Director of HR Innovation and Workforce Technology at Delta Airlines.

[[divider]]

Levi Goertz is cofounder and Head of Client Solutions at Valence. He works closely with each of our enterprise clients, bringing deep expertise on how Valence’s tools unlock the full potential of every employee.