As humans, we are biased. Our opinions, views, and judgments on our experiences, education, and beliefs form from our biases. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D., studied biases in reviews, judgments, and decision-making. His findings earned him a Nobel Prize. Dr Kahneman found that how things are framed sways people’s decisions and their intuition. Biases affect all of us.
We seek to validate existing opinions and justify previous decisions, even poor ones. Unfortunately, this habit doesn’t stop when managers give annual reviews. Even with the best intentions, the yearly review is subject to various biases that steal its effectiveness and downgrade employee engagement.
Annual reviews show several consistent biases. Fortunately, managers can take steps to overcome these natural biases, discussed later in this article.
Recency Bias: What Have You Done For Me Lately?
Annual reviews are supposed to review an employee’s performance for the entire year. But, studies show that annual reviews are more often a review of an employee’s recent performance. It’s human nature to weigh recent events compared to past ones disproportionately. This shows up in annual reviews. An employee who consistently performs above their metrics but underperforms for two months before their annual review will usually receive worse reviews than a mediocre employee who has crushed their goals for the last two months.
Recency bias goes by another name; “What have you done for me lately?” It reflects our tendency to care most deeply about the present and events closest to present times. It’s unconscious and it’s dangerous because of its unfairness.
Engaged employees with recent struggles feel they are only valuable because of their recent contributions. They feel like commodities. Engagement drops. Quality employees leave.
How to Fix Recency Bias in Annual Reviews
Recency bias is an unconscious behavior that likely stems from our need to adapt to a changing world. But, in annual reviews, it hurts instead of helps. Managers can overcome recency bias by acknowledging that it affects the reviews they give.
Managers should take regular notes about their employee’s performance. Monthly notes that are reviewed before the annual review can help overcome recency bias. Monthly reviews with employees work even better to improve performance.
Feedback is best given in a timely, consistent manner. When managers have performance conversations with employees regularly, they see a marked improvement in employee performance.
But, even if reviews remain primarily annual, managers should seek to record regular feedback to share with employees. Ask teammates, instructors, and other teams regularly to review employees so you can get a fair assessment throughout the year.
Tribe Bias: Are You Similar to Me?
Tribe bias occurs when the reviewer feels sympathetic to the person they are reviewing. Managers who see themselves in an employee are more likely to overlook negative traits than when they don’t see the employee as similar to themselves. Likewise, managers who view employees as younger versions of themselves are more likely to rank those employees’ strengths as crucial than the strengths of dissimilar employees.
This tendency to have biases toward others like us makes it harder to have a fair review and to create an inclusive workplace. People like others who are similar to them more than those who are not.
Similar-to-me-bias makes managers disproportionately favor employees that are like themselves. Also known as tribal bias, managers hire more people like the existing team instead of diverse individuals. This tendancy can include the likelihood of a manager hiring the same gender as themselves, the same ethnicity, educational background, nationality, or beliefs as themselves.
Employees who mirror a manager’s viewpoints are most likely to receive better reviews than those who contrast their manager’s views.
Similar to me bias affects promotions, reviews, and hiring habits. Workplace studies have found that most employees (as much as 85% in many studies) have managers of the same ethnicity and gender as themselves. This is a reflection of similar-to-me biases. Harvard Business Review found that gender biases are very prevalent in reviews.
How to Overcome Tribal Bias
Managers can reduce tribal bias by focusing on specific employee goals, reviewing all reviews to watch for consistency, and writing down specific examples for all employees.
HBR suggests that managers write down three examples for each employee review. In the study by HBR, managers tended to give specific, relevant feedback to male employees and generic, communication-focused, and gender-biased feedback to women. Women were likely to be seen as too aggressive, while aggressive men were seen as leaders. When managers work to give specific feedback to all employees, it tends to reduce similar-to-me bias.
Managers can also seek to educate themselves and widen their tribes. As teams become more diverse, it becomes easier for managers to reduce tribal bias.
Primacy Bias in Reviews
Primacy bias occurs when managers allow their first impressions to overshadow an employee’s performance. This can happen when a manager has a strong impression of an employee, even if the employee demonstrates traits that negate the first impression.
Primacy bias occurs during hiring. Managers are more likely to remember the first interviewees. They are more likely to judge an interview by how well the first question is answered. Higher quality employees who interview later are more likely to be passed over in favor of applicants that are interviewed first.
Primacy bias affects new employees. Employers are more likely to judge an employee by the first impression. Managers that start off with a negative first impression can struggle to shed negative impressions when the annual review time comes.
Minimizing Primacy Bias During Reviews
Unsurprisingly one of the best ways to overcome this is to take extensive notes of all employees or interviewees. Implementing a structured interview or a structured review process helps to reduce primacy bias.
When managers review employees using open-ended questions and an open format, primacy bias sneaks in stronger. But, when they take a structured approach to review employees and use specific questions, primacy bias reduces.
Halo or Horns Bias Effect During Reviews
The halo or horns bias occurs when managers allow a single trait or characteristic to overshadow the employee’s performance. For example, an employee who rubs a manager wrong in how they speak may unfairly receive a more negative review even if their performance is higher than other employees.
Or an employee who habitually tells jokes might be seen as casual or uncommitted about their job, even if that employee always meets work goals. An employee who exceeds sales goals might be rated with forgiveness for failing to do their reports.
Overcoming Halo/Horns Biases During Reviews
Managers can reduce the halo/horns bias by taking frequent, regular notes on employees. Notes provide managers with more frequent and specific information from which to write the annual review.
Managers can examine their feelings about specific employees and define why they feel that way. This can help them to identify what particular circumstances affect their feelings and opinions.
Rater Bias in Reviews
Rater bias occurs because people naturally rate the skills and knowledge they possess as more important than the knowledge they don’t possess. Managers exhibit rater bias when they rank employees who share the same abilities as themselves higher than employees who have mastered different skills.
Rater bias can work oppositely as well. Managers can rank skills they don’t have as more important than skills they already possess. This can cause them to rate employees less that have the same knowledge they have.
Overcoming Rater Biases
Managers can overcome rater bias by using objective criteria instead of subjective criteria. Recording or reviewing employee performance regularly also helps to overcome rater bias. Taking notes and obtaining feedback from multiple people can also help to overcome individual rater bias.
Central Tendency Bias (Average Rating)
Managers who tend to rate all their employees in the middle often fail to evaluate employees individually. Instead, employees are lumped together during performance reviews. Giving employees an average rating, regardless of performance, discourages employee engagement.
Reducing Central Tendency Bias During Reviews
When managers answer specific questions, central tendency bias are reduced. General questions tend to encourage central tendency bias. Managers can also avoid ranking employees by the average ranking, forcing them to define whether an employee is an under producer or an over-producer.
Attribution Bias in Performance Reviews
Attribution bias is when managers judge employees based on their belief systems, values, and internal opinions. It’s similar to when people judge historical figures based on modern values. Attribution bias manifests as a self-serving bias. Individuals, managers included, are more likely to believe their successes were a result of their hard work and their failures were a result of bad luck or external factors.
But, when viewing others’ accomplishments or failures, managers are more likely to believe that failures were due to an employee’s lack of skills or poor performance. They view success as luck rather than from the skill of the employee. This is seen in greater extremes when managers review women than men. Women are more often rated as underperforming, even with the same performance.
A manager may view a late employee as lazy or irresponsible but view his late arrival as caused by external factors, such as traffic.
Diminishing Attribution Bias
Managers reduce attribution bias by allowing greater and more open feedback from employees. This provides managers with more relevant information and a greater understanding of how an employee succeeded or what factors affected their failure.
Managers should challenge the stories they tell themselves about employees and themselves. Identifying the narrative and challenging it helps managers to seek the truth. This encourages them to verify the story’s reality and opens managers up for honest conversations and employee feedback.
Contrast Effect in Performance Reviews
Managers that compare employees to each other instead of to company standards. While contrasting others is typical behavior, it can negatively influence performance reviews. Contrast bias often occurs when managers contrast an employee to the last employee review. The manager might review an exceptional employee, followed by a good employee, and then an average employee. Good employees are ranked worse than if they were ranked after the average employee.
Eliminating Contrast Effect During Annual Reviews
Employee reviews encourage contrast bias by nature. Because employee reviews often require managers to rank employees, managers must put some employees at the bottom, regardless of whether or not they are meeting their goals. This is similar to ranking students on a curve.
It creates an unfair ranking that introduces bias based on the rest of the team and their achievements.
Managers should focus on comparing employees against the company standards and preset goals for the employee. When managers focus on how employees performed against earlier goals discussed with the employee instead of against other employees, their reviews are fairer.
Leniency Bias During Performance Reviews
Leniency bias occurs when managers are sympathetic or empathetic with an employee and overlook negative behavior or enhance positive behavior. An employee going through a difficult divorce might be given a better review despite performing poorly. Or, a manager might avoid providing feedback for improvement to an employee whose family member is fighting a terminal illness.
One example of leniency bias occurred with an employee who made it his mission to help others whenever they needed help. Because of the manager’s gratitude for his service, he never gave this employee specific feedback about glaring gaps in his performance. When he was fired a year later, the employee questioned, “Why did no one tell me I wasn’t doing well?”
Sadly, the answer was leniency bias by his direct manager, which ultimately let him believe he was performing well. He failed to do better because his reviews weren’t fair. He may have been able to improve his performance and avoid being fired if he had received honest feedback in his reviews.
Another example of leniency bias occurs when managers have many employees to review. As the manager becomes burned out from writing reviews, they start giving all the rest of the employees good reviews so they don’t have to justify the review.
Overcoming Leniency Bias
Managers can work to identify and document specific examples to justify reviews. They can break annual employee reviews into different times of the year so they don’t get burned out. Or, managers can break up employee reviews into different days.
Ultimately, when managers have documented specific examples for employees, the review is likely to be fairer and provide better, more specific feedback.
Conclusion
Review biases affect everyone, but managers can overcome biases by maintaining regular records, making notes about specific situations, and increasing communication with employees. They should challenge their preconceptions and see to further understanding and truth. As managers work to create clear, objectionable reviews, biases will reduce over time.
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