Unless you actively make sure you’re incorporating methods to prevent bias in your performance reviews, you’re taking your prejudices into the room with you. That’s because, whether conscious or unconscious, all people make decisions based on personal intuition as opposed to logic.
That means you need to go against human nature to put a system in place that’s fair for all employees and takes personal opinions out of the performance review process. Since life-changing decisions, like promotions and terminations, can hinge on the outcomes of these assessments, it’s vital you take a proactive approach.
Here are 7 common biases that impact your performance reviews:
1. Recency bias
Focusing on only what an employee has achieved in the time directly prior to their performance review is called recency bias. It can refer to both positive and negative events, but can mean assessments aren’t accurate as managers fail to take into consideration contributions from earlier in the year.
You can overcome recency bias by collecting feedback about employees regularly and keeping it on file from the first day they join the company. This will allow you to refer back to notes when the performance review comes around and make a more accurate analysis of an individual’s overall record.
2. Similar-to-me bias
People have a natural affinity with those who come from similar backgrounds or display the same interests, but that doesn’t make them better at doing their job. Allowing a similar-to-me bias to reward employees unduly can lead to a lack of diversity in the workplace and make some staff feel excluded.
When it comes to preventing this type of bias, the key is to put specific criteria for judgment in place in advance. This reduces the reliance on prejudices and ensures all employees are held to the same standards without allowing stereotypes to take hold.
3. Gender bias
A tendency to appraise women on their personalities and men on their behaviors and accomplishments is indicative of gender bias. It denies women the opportunity for constructive feedback on areas they could improve and is responsible for much of the gender pay gap and inequality in the workplace.
Structuring performance reviews to keep the focus on achievements is vital to prevent gender bias creeping in. This can be done in a number of ways, such as predetermined criteria and fill-in-the-blank questionnaires that prevent managers from going off-topic.
4. Idiosyncratic rater bias
Managers tend to have higher standards for skills they’re personally good at than those they find tricky. This results in them being more lenient in areas where they don’t excel and dismissive of strong performance at tasks they would complete easily. This idiosyncratic rater bias, if not addressed, can mean performance reviews say more about the manager than the employee.
It may sound counterintuitive, but reframing the questions in the review to be from a manager’s point of view can actually help to mitigate this type of bias. This emphasis on your own intentions is often more reliable and will give a clearer picture of the member of staff’s true performance.
5. Contrast bias
Benchmarking workers against their peers has an obvious downside and it’s the fact that someone must always come out at the bottom. What that can translate to in reality is an employee being penalized for falling below their contemporaries even though they’re exceeding the standards set out by the company.
Avoid contrast bias by laying out performance review questions in relation to the organization’s goals and aims, as well as the employee’s job description. Being realistic about expectations is vital, as not all staff will be able to reach the heights of the most exceptional.
6. Halo bias
Managers can find themselves influenced in their opinion of an employee’s overall performance because they do one aspect of their job really well. This can lead to missed opportunities in improving their skills elsewhere and sometimes even leave problems unaddressed due to the perceived value of their headline credentials.
Performance reviews must be comprehensive and analyze each area of a person’s job in isolation. The same amount of time and focus should be given to all sections so as to avoid halo bias allowing positive attributes to overshadow all others.
7. Horn bias
The antithesis of halo bias is horn bias and leads staff members who have a gap in their skills to be marked down in other areas too. As well as seeing them being passed over for promotion or pay rises, this form of bias can have a negative effect on morale, with the employee being led to believe they’re not good at their job at all.
Since the horn bias and halo bias are so inextricably related, the same tactics used to prevent one work with the other. A proper and full analysis is required of an individual’s responsibilities, otherwise the results will always be skewed.
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