Annual review season can be a challenging, frustrating time of year for both managers and employees. Conscientious managers want to make sure they’re providing useful feedback and supporting all employees regardless of their background, but it isn’t easy. And it’s not always balanced or fair for those from historically excluded backgrounds.
Hue’s State of Inequity report found that since 2020, 80% of organizations have not made meaningful progress on building a more equitable working environment for people of color. BIPOC employees are also nearly two times as likely to report that they have not had the same opportunities to succeed as others at their company. The more experienced the BIPOC employees, the more likely they are to hold this sentiment, according to the data.
For those looking to make progress, a new approach for reviews is one way to help change that for the better. It’s important to acknowledge the different ways that bias can appear in evaluations and reviews before making a sincere effort to remove or avoid it.
Here are some tips for reducing bias in the annual review process so that performance management becomes a positive driving factor in your culture, equity, and inclusion efforts
Be careful with your words
An analysis from Textio, software that helps companies write performance reviews, found that women receive 22% more feedback on their personality than men and that Black and Latine people receive 2.4 times more non-actionable feedback than their Asian and white counterparts.
Textio analyzed performance feedback for 25,000 people at more than 250 organizations, finding an interesting split relating to the use of the word “ambitious.”
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of men were described as ambitious, compared to just 17% of women. Just 8% of Black people and 14% of Latine were described in this way, compared to 57% of Asians and 39% of white people.
Other seemingly positive terms have correlations with historically excluded groups in Textio’s study. For example, Black women are four times more likely to be called an “overachiever” than a white man, and Asian men are seven times more likely to have “brilliant” or “genius” in their feedback compared to Latina women.
In this case, “overachiever” may imply that an individual does not have strong skills or education warranting their position, or that those from a similar background don’t belong, so their success is viewed as an outlier –- similar to the way “articulate” can be problematically deployed, as it assumes the opposite of most people in that category. “Brilliant” or “genius” may imply that a person doesn’t have other positive attributes like leadership skills, which could inadvertently knock a person’s work ethic or culture fit.
We know that how you use your words and how you frame ideas matters a lot. Look out for words like “ambitious” and “overachiever.” Find better ways to describe what you are saying. You could even analyze your own historical reviews to see if any biases exist.
Practice evaluation and review scenarios
Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio, chair of the Executive Leadership Research Initiative for Women and Minority Attorneys at Harvard Law School, says that managers should practice hypothetical evaluation scenarios to better prepare for a fair review process. These can be drawn from anonymized or slightly altered profiles of real employees, which allows managers to form their assessments and discuss their feedback in a safe group setting. It also allows for some calibration and consistency across managers going into the review process without using personal identifiable information.
Cecchi-Dimeglio also emphasizes that supporting data and observations are crucial for justifying any assessment of a person’s contributions. Having time to practice enables managers to consider where they can look for different forms of evidence and create an honest, fact-based evaluation that is standardized across the same type of employee, so that they are evaluated equally.
Consider a person’s life outside of work
These are unprecedented times. Much ink has been spilled about the challenges affecting working moms, anyone caring for their parents or other family members, not to mention the ongoing socio-political realities around us, along with personal matters that someone may be dealing with at home.
This guidance echoes the timeless advice that has been attributed to the late Robin Williams and also applies here: "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always."
Cecchi-Dimeglio has said to “contextualize absences” of employees, a good nod for being remote-friendly and ridding work cultures of presenteeism. She points out that “women have been more frequently criticized,” for working from home or adopting flex hours compared to men. Stop docking people for not being present, she writes, and try to bridge the gap with support and technology so that being present is never an impediment to getting work done. People need it.
While many people treat reviews as a thing to check off the list and just get done as painlessly as possible, they still have a large role in promotion and advancement, and in many cases are the only record of success, or lack thereof, that some employees have. Managers have a responsibility to take the process seriously and commit themselves to identifying and removing biases from the process.
