A Faster Way to Remove Bias from Performance Management | Talent Strategy Group

Last week I made a post on performance management bias (PMB) and how it is a topic of interest to many organizations that seek to achieve more fair and objective performance management (PM). Although PMB was an issue before the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis is likely to exacerbate PMB due to shifts in ways of working, changes in worker and employee interactions, and reprioritization of goals and objectives. This article by the Talent Strategy Group posits that reducing PMB is heavily determined by having robust PM process controls that reduce bias faster by 1) subjecting individual managers’ PM evaluation to group calibration 2) using analytics to identify and correct bias across the PM process, 3) having clear standards that reduce variation in how PM is implemented. Tactics are offered on minimizing bias at each stage of the PM cycle. One tactic to ensure that team members’ goals are set at a relatively consistent level of difficulty is to have each team member read his/her goals to each other (and the manager) and then adjust as needed.