Regardless of how you feel about performance reviews or their future within your organization, chances are that your organization is one of the 70 percent of companies that at least hold annual reviews. As we enter December, the traditional time for annual reviews, understanding the role bias plays in the evaluation process and what you can do to help your managers and leaders minimize it is more important than ever.
5 guiding principles for minimizing bias in performance reviews
One of the greatest struggles people leaders face in annual reviews is that the managers and leaders they coach are evaluating different roles, functions, and levels, while also operating from their own different knowledge bases, experience levels and personal performance philosophies. In other words, keeping your performance evaluation process the same across every department, team and employee isn’t possible.
For this reason, operating from a few guiding principles that adapt and apply across a wide array of people and teams is often a more strategic move than enforcing a one-size fits all plan. As you guide your evaluators, reinforce these five principles to help them lead a more equitable experience.
1. Keep compensation and annual reviews separate.
The stakes are too high around compensation to honestly discuss performance. For example, employees are less likely to evaluate their performance accurately if they seek a raise – the desire to achieve an increase may obstruct the need to ask for support in key growth areas. Conversely, managers with tight budgets might unconsciously (or even consciously) rate their direct reports lower because they don’t believe they can afford raises or bonuses.
In a compensation conversation, the agenda is set so an employee can clearly articulate a desire for an increase and a manager can transparently name budgetary challenges. Together, they can discuss a collaborative approach.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case in performance conversations, where the two loaded topics of money and performance often get discussed interchangeably. Annual reviews are for celebrating successes and naming improvement areas, not negotiating pay.
2. Stick to your growth dimensions.
Whether you call them growth dimensions, performance variables, rating categories, or something else, having a clearly defined set of criteria for measuring performance is essential to any fair annual review process.
Emphasize to managers the importance of reading the criteria descriptions before assigning numeric ratings or writing up feedback. Then, ensure managers have at least two examples of behaviors that align for each dimension. The more abstract the feedback, the more open to bias the employee is – share a few models of concrete, actionable feedback.
For example, suppose one of your growth dimensions is “responsiveness,” defined as answering questions, responding to needs and communicating consistently and effectively with team members and customers. In that case, you can clearly show great, good and poor feedback.
| Great | Good | Poor |
| Will convincingly cover these three elements: 1. A detailed breakdown of at least two situations where they did or did not exhibit responsiveness 2. A clear connection between those situations and the expectations for the role 3. One or more concrete suggestions for improvement or continuation of positive performance Example: “Two instances stick out as the biggest learning opportunities in responsiveness for the employee. During the July Annual Meeting, all team members were asked to put up out of offices to let customers know they would not be answering email requests for 24 hours. The employee did not put up an out of office, leading to several customers reaching out to other team members for support while they waited for responses. Later on, when the employee went on vacation for one week in September, I asked them to communicate their vacation days to the team and put the dates on the team calendar. They did not share the news with the team or add out of office invites to the calendar. As a Customer Support Specialist, responsiveness is one of the key responsibilities of the role since their ability to answer questions for customers in a timely manner is our company’s guarantee. Additionally, as a team member working in a fast-paced department, letting colleagues know of absences is critical as they will absorbing those responsibilities. In the future, I recommend the employee create template out of office messages and pre-schedule them, calendar out all pre-planned vacation time on the team calendar, and pre-write and schedule Slack messages announcing vacation time. | Will cover: Two of three elements of a great answer. For example, they may provide two examples and a solution but not explain why it’s important for the role. Similarly, they may offer only one example, failing to establish a pattern or account for a one-off mistake, which may make the employee feel unfairly singled out. Example: “Two instances stick out as the biggest learning opportunities in responsiveness for the employee. During the July Annual Meeting, all team members were asked to put up out-of-offices to let customers know they would not be answering email requests for 24 hours. The employee did not put up an out of office, leading to several customers reaching out to other team members for support while they waited for responses. Later on, when the employee went on vacation for one week in September, I asked them to communicate their vacation days to the team and put the dates on the team calendar. They did not share the news with the team or add out of office invites to the calendar. In the future, I recommend the employee create template out of office messages and pre-schedule them, calendar out all pre-planned vacation time on the team calendar, and pre-write and schedule Slack messages announcing vacation time. | Will cover: None or only one of the elements of a great answer. Example: “The employee isn’t responsive enough.” |
3. Prepare in advance.
To be thoughtful and honest, managers must consider an employee’s performance holistically and their own as a manager. This means blocking off time before the day of the review to look at those growth dimensions and reflect on where the employee is. Improvising or addressing situations organically in the review can lead to recency bias (focusing only on recent events rather than the year of performance), centrality bias (rating everything at a “central” or neutral score despite actual performance), or affinity bias (rating people with similar backgrounds, tendencies or shared likes higher than those without that similarity).
While you can guide managers to prepare in advance, the reality is that the end of the year is a hectic time for most leaders and the best intentions may not lead to actual results. Schedule performance review preparation sessions either one-on-one or with a small group of managers to essentially host a “study hall” where they are accountable for completing their reviews. The social pressure and support will help keep them on task and committed. Plus, by preparing in advance with you, you’re much more able to help them formulate the “great” responses described in principle two.
4. Top-down feedback isn’t enough.
From a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging perspective, 360º feedback is the ideal model for reviews. This framework allows for top-down, bottom-up and peer-to-peer feedback to be shared in each review cycle, offering a much more comprehensive view of an employee’s performance. Plus, the different participants’ aggregated feedback can help identify areas where the employee might be an unsung hero, lagging because of a resource gap, or simply misunderstood by one or more folks on the team.
Tools like CultureAmp, Lattice, and 7Geese make this process far more manageable than the old method of creating, sorting and storing Word documents or Excel spreadsheets across multiple people. With that said, if you don’t have a 360º process, it’s far too important to introduce it suddenly.
Instead, coach your managers to come prepared with questions for their direct report on improving their management practice. Three questions that help focus responses are:
- What is one thing I can start doing to make you more effective?
- What is one thing I can stop doing to make you more effective?
- What is one thing I can continue doing to make you more effective?
Bonus points if, after your managers collect these responses, they store them in an easy-to-review location and book a meeting with you to discuss what they learned and how they will take action in the next year.
5. Check biases, literally.
As you guide your managers, instruct them to keep a list of biases in front of them during annual reviews, so they have a solid reminder of what to avoid. This different form of accountability can help promote self-awareness and slow down impulsive behavior, especially if some defensiveness creeps in during a challenging review.
In my book, “Cultures of Belonging,” I advocate so strongly for checking your bias when giving feedback that I even created a decision tree managers can work through before, during, and after any feedback exchange. You can view a free PDF of that decision tree here.
