The Three-Step Process To Curtail Bias In Performance Reviews

By Courtney Seiter—Buffer

Bias creeps into almost every area of our lives and decision-making, whether we know it or not.

 

It’s not that we’re bad people, determined to pre-judge others. Rather, it’s our brains taking shortcuts that have been created over centuries. That makes it pretty tricky to undo effectively, but there are ways.

We’ve previously written about one practice we’ve tried here at Buffer–where we share an information sheet on minimizing bias with teammates before they write their reviews. Here’s a deeper dive into why it’s important to minimize bias during performance reviews, and how you can implement it in your companies.

Why It’s Important To Address Bias In Performance Reviews

A study by Kieran Snyder looked at 248 reviews across 28 companies, and found that 59% of the reviews received by men contained critical feedback, while 88% of reviews received by women did. Many were critical of women’s personalities and tone in particular as compared to men.

Data also demonstrates that black workers receive extra scrutiny from bosses, which can lead to worse performance reviews, lower wages, and even job loss. Disabled people, gender non-conforming people, LGBTQ folks and more are also vulnerable to harmful bias.

According to the Level Playing Field Institute’s incredible Corporate Leavers Survey:

  • People of color are three times more likely to leave a job because of workplace unfairness
  • LGBTQ professionals leave almost twice as often because of workplace unfairness.
  • 27% of those who experienced unfairness at work said their experience strongly discouraged them from recommending their employer to other potential employees.
  • Unfairness at work costs U.S. employers $64 billion on an annual basis.

Unfairness erodes trust and company culture. It damages your company and brand. It leaves vulnerable your very best resource–your people.

 

Fixing performance reviews won’t magically change these dismal numbers overnight. But it’s an important step toward building a culture of mutual respect, inclusivity, and psychological safety for all. So how to take that step?

Step 1: Build Awareness Of Bias

The first step for us at Buffer was to help everyone on the team understand that bias exists, and to build a common vocabulary to talk about it.

On one of our in-person team retreats, we took part in an afternoon of unconscious bias training with the consulting firm Paradigm.This introduction to bias opened up a lot of great conversations that have been ongoing ever since.

If your company doesn’t have the resources to bring in an external facilitator, you can try a “train-the-trainers” program that will allow someone on your team to take back the knowledge and skills to present to your whole company.

After your team is familiar with these broad concepts, keep the conversation going. At Buffer, we have a very active diversity and inclusion Slack channel. It’s a place where we share resources and ask questions about everything from the term “housekeeping” to what the composition of a speaker panel should look like in order for us to feel comfortable taking part.

We also created important team-wide reference documents, including a Buffer code of conduct and a workplace harassment policy, so there’s a common understanding of what types of behavior are expected and what types won’t be tolerated.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Review Tools And Process

Buffer took a bit of an unorthodox path, from no reviews, to some sporadic reviews, to 360 reviews that involved full-team training and understanding of these concepts.

We’ve learned that a regular, consistent review cadence is best, as feedback on the fly creates conditions for bias to flourish.

If you are already on a regular review cadence or are considering beginning one, an important step is to evaluate your review process, questions, and tools to unearth bias opportunities.

Processes

Does your process:

 

  • Begin with clear, specific performance criteria directly related to job requirements?
  • Use a consistent review system across your team (or minimally, across an entire area)?
  • Ask for specific evidence and examples from the evaluation period?
  • Separate personality from skill set?
  • Evaluate performance evaluations across the team for consistency?
  • Work with managers whose reviews don’t provide specific examples or show signs of bias?

Questions

Do your review questions ask about observable, specific, objective, measurable behaviors? Trakstar shares that a good example of a top rating might be, “Rarely or never misses deadlines.” This is clearer and more objective than a simple, “Meets Expectations” or “Exceeds Expectations.”

We’ve learned to be aware of and push back on subjective review observations that can often delve into personality, style, or attitude, and lead reviewers to “go with their gut”–exactly where unconscious biases rise to the surface. We’re also working on questioning vague observations like “They’re rocking it!” to ask for more specific, measurable examples.

Tools

As you look for a tool to help automate parts of the process or evaluate an existing tool, make sure you research how the tool approaches bias. Is it something they’ve considered and built into their process?

Select software that makes it easy to see company-wide trends, while offering the ability to zoom in on an individual employee. As you evaluate, keep an eye out for outliers, like a single rater with much higher or much lower ratings.

 

Step 3: Interrupt Bias At Its Origin

A final step is to build additional checks, resources, and awareness into your performance review process to interrupt bias at the points where it’s most likely to occur.

Self-reviews

Self-evaluations are a great reflection tool, but they can be rife with bias when used incorrectly as part of a performance appraisal.

People can differ greatly in terms of confidence and comfort with touting their own accomplishments. Women, for example, are more likely to underestimate their capabilities. And the anchoring effect means that managers can’t help unconsciously adjust their own reviews–for better or worse–based on what they see in a self review.

To interrupt:

 

Manager reviews

It’s helpful for your whole team to be aware of bias and the particular types of bias and errors most common in performance appraisals, but it’s especially crucial for team leads and managers who complete performance reviews more frequently.

To interrupt:

At Buffer, we encourage anyone who coaches another teammate regularly in one-on-one chats to keep an ongoing document where they record achievements and challenges. During review periods, they can look back at these notes to remind themselves of performance highlights, ultimately improving the accuracy of their reviews.

Try peer reviews or 360 feedback

 

Many of the above techniques and resources listed for manager reviews can also benefit the full team in the event of 360 reviews.

The good news in this area is that a fair amount of research shows that 360 reviews are preferable for mitigating bias because they employ a variety of sources rather than relying on a single data point.

Performance feedback from multiple sources gives you a more complete picture while minimizing the impact of any particular rater’s bias. We’re now doing 360 reviews at Buffer at least once a year for the whole team, and teammates have the option to get more feedback during any review period to round out their overall feedback.

A version of this article originally appeared on Buffer and is adapted with permission.

 

 

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