How Do You Evaluate Performance During a Pandemic? | Harvard Business Review

Determining how to evaluate and reward employees fairly can be challenging at any time. However, the pandemic has presented conditions that make the fair evaluation of employee performance even more arduous. And as managers are in the process of year-end performance evaluations, these challenges are likely to give rise to performance management bias (PMB), resulting in unfair and less objective performance evaluations. This article provides three steps that can minimize PMB. 1) Define effective criteria before making critical decisions about employees. Rather than using general criteria, managers must carefully consider what they truly value and wish to reward under the current circumstances. 2) Align all decision-makers. Managers should align on the most important criteria and be explicit about measuring them precisely and consistently. 3) Engage others in being consistent and equitable. During PM calibration discussions, managers should ensure that the team isn’t deviating from the agreed-upon PM criteria when discussing employee performance. Although applying these three criteria in PM is essential during any year, it is especially pertinent to the current context. For additional resources on reducing PM bias, check out this recent post.