How Managers Can Break the Bias in Performance Reviews

The season of annual performance reviews is upon us. It's a time of year that can create anxiety for managers and employees alike, for very different reasons. Performance reviews aren't the objective vehicles for evaluating employee performance that we would like them to be. In fact, numerous studies have confirmed the impact of bias on performance assessments and career advancement for women of all races and ethnicities, and people of color. 

A 2020 Stanford analysis of the reviews of employees at a Fortune 500 company found that while women and men were “equally likely to be described as having technical ability, women were more frequently characterized as aggressive, which negatively impacted how they were perceived and their career opportunities.” And a 2019 study found that Asian women – because of stereotypes related to both their gender and race – are less likely to be assessed as having leadership potential as compared to other women. 

Some of the factors contributing to bias in reviews and subsequent disparities promotions are the design of the process, lack of training for managers on the purpose and process of reviews, and an absence of  “just-in-time” data to help identify trends that require intervention. While it’s clear that there's much work to be done to make the performance review process more equitable, there are immediate actions managers and employees can take to disrupt bias and improve the review process from their vantage points, while also advocating for further changes in how we assess and promote talent. 

What can managers do?

For managers, performance reviews are usually a vehicle for recapping employee performance in the past year, formalizing advancement opportunities like promotions, and financially rewarding employee contributions. If you’re a manager, you’re a critical part of this talent management process, and how you conduct talent reviews has a significant impact on perceptions of fairness, psychological safety, and career development for employees. 

We all have internalized biases – including biases around gender, race, disability, as well as other biases – that tie to stereotypes and our lack of awareness and understanding of communities and people who are different from us. If you're not actively doing the work to interrogate and disrupt your biases, they can show up in how you lead and manage your team – particularly those team members from underrepresented groups. It’s critical that you consciously engage in the work to disrupt your biases all year round, but especially during talent review season when you’re more susceptible to bias creep because of a number of different factors (e.g., lack of objective assessment criteria, pressures of time, etc.). As a manager, here's what you can do to interrupt bias and make the performance review process more equitable for your team.

• Provide regular feedback to your team: In this article from The Lily, "Tips to help you prepare for annual reviews," Kym A. Harris-Lee, Ed.D. reminds us that "the purpose of the performance review is really to be a playback. People shouldn't be hearing anything they have not heard before. There should be no blindsiding." Make sure you're providing regular feedback to your team -  ideally on a weekly or bi-weekly basis - and that your feedback is drawn from what you’ve observed working while with them (insight on the “how” and the “what” of their work). Use the performance review to summarize your team member's progress over the past year and define expectations for the year ahead. 
• Check for biased language: One example of the way that bias shows up in performance reviews is in the language ascribed to the performance of women vs. the performance of men. A 2020 study by the Clayman Institute of hundreds of performance reviews found that performance assessments of women were twice as likely to contain references to their “communal or nurturing” style and that women were more than twice as likely to receive feedback on “aggressive” communication styles. Shelley Correll, co-author and lead of the study, explained how gendered descriptions of women as “helpful” or “supportive” impacted ratings: “We saw that women were more likely to be seen as communal than men were, but it did not, for men or women, lead to the highest rating.” One action you can take when calibrating employee performance is to “prime” your brain to be more cognizant of common biases that often show up when assessing performance. Here's a shortlist of resources you can use to be more cognizant of bias when evaluating employee performance and promotion readiness.

1. Culture Amp blog post, “10 performance review biases and how to avoid them”
2. National Center for Women & Information Technology's fact sheet on unconscious bias, performance evaluation, and promotions.
3. Bias Interrupters "Bias Interrupters for Performance Evaluations"

• Analyze your patterns: If you’ve managed for a few years, you should have access to data from previous performance reviews, ratings, and promotions that you’ve submitted for your team. Take the time to aggregate the data and scrutinize it for any patterns in language used in the reviews, ratings assigned, and promotions of team members. Even if it seems minor, it’s worth digging in further and thinking through how you’ll break a specific pattern or tendency in the future. This could look like re-thinking how you allocate assignments, spend time with your team members, or how you gather feedback on employee performance.
• Ask employees to share a self-assessment: An employee self-assessment provides insight into how they view their performance and can also offer you clarity about aspects of their work you might have limited knowledge of, like specific barriers they faced, and how they’ve partnered with other functions in their work. Have each team member share a brief self-assessment with you prior to writing their reviews. Make this an easy ask by encouraging them to keep it to one page, with feedback from the prior year in these three areas: 1) Successes (big wins and smaller wins that create shifts), 2) Challenges (including potential growth areas), and 3) What’s Next (what’s next in the year ahead).
• Provide feedback on the process: As a manager, your feedback on the review process is valuable. Share your insights on the performance review process with your HR/People team, as well as with your manager and leadership. Your feedback can help make the case for specific improvements that lead to a fairer, more effective process. 

What can employees do?

For a lot of employees, the review process can be nerve-wracking, especially if you’ve got doubts about the fairness of the process, have a poor or uneven relationship with your manager or have had a difficult year (personally or professionally). Even if you’ve had a great year and have a fantastic manager, there’s something about being evaluated by peers and/or your manager that creates discomfort. In this moment, focus on what you can control by preparing for the review process and telling your story:

• Know the process: Learn about your organization’s performance review process. How is the review process used? Is it a vehicle for looking backwards on performance? How are employees recognized and rewarded through the review process? Understanding the review process and its outcomes will inform how you approach it.
• Define your objective: What is it that you want to get out of the review process? Are you aiming to get promoted soon? Move into a new role? The review process is a formal step in career development and advancement. Be clear about what you want from the process, career-wise, and use your review to start defining a development plan for the year ahead.
• Be your best advocate: Take time to write the self-assessment, whether it’s required or not. This is your opportunity to share your perspective on your performance over the past year. What went well? Where did you stumble? What’s your plan for your career and how do your accomplishments and experiences from the past year fit into your plan? Detail this in clear, concise terms and share it with your manager. Here’s more advice on writing your self-assessment from The Lily’s article, “Tips to help you prepare for annual reviews”:
• "Focus on what you’ve achieved, but also the value of what you’ve achieved. Focus on what is unique about your approach and how you engage with others, and consider the long-term impacts of what you’ve done: What have you put in place that only you can do?"
• "Highlight major achievements, but don’t forget the smaller, more granular things: Did you step in for a co-worker? Resolve a conflict? How many reports did you write and how many relationships did you build?"
• Provide feedback on the process: Your feedback as an employee participating in the review process is just as valuable, and can help call attention to flaws in the process and inform meaningful changes. Share your feedback with your HR/People Team, your manager, and leaders responsible for updating and implementing the review process (relative to your comfort level in doing so with each group or person).

During talent review season, in some organizations employees are asked to provide peer feedback on the performance of their colleagues. Before you agree to provide feedback, think carefully about how much you know about your colleague’s work, their performance goals, and how they work with other employees across the organization. Have you observed enough about what the person does and how they do it to offer specific, substantive, feedback on their performance? If the answer is yes, before you draft your feedback, think about what biases may influence your perception of their performance. Make sure you’re aware of your biases and have taken steps to minimize them as you write and submit your feedback.

As your organization’s performance review process and systems continue to evolve, you can do your part – as a manager or an employee – to better the process from wherever you sit in the company. By adopting the recommendations here, you can help disrupt bias in performance assessments, model reforms within the process, and encourage more balanced results in how we assess and recognize performance at work.