5 Most Prominent Biasness Trends in Performance Management System
Nitin Mohan M.
AVP HR @ Midas Consulting | Talent Acquisition, Business Development , Creating Winning Organizations
One of the most difficult aspects in the performance appraisal process has to do with biases. A bias is defined as a prejudice in favor of or against someone or something. It should go without saying that employees expect their performance evaluations to be fair and free of biases.
The most prominent 5 kind of biasness in performance appraisal process are hereunder:
- Recency – The employee’s most recent behavior becomes the primary focus of the review. This can go both ways. A poor performer does something terrific and their past performance is forgotten. Or an excellent performer makes a mistake and it weighs down the rest of the review
- Contrast – This occurs when the manager compares an employee’s performance to other employees instead of the company standard. When employees are ranked in comparison, someone must end up at the bottom, even if they are exceeding the company standard. The problem isn’t the employee – it’s the goal or standard that has been set.
- Leniency – A manager gives everyone on his team a satisfactory rating. Unfortunately, this occur a lot when a manager has a large span of control coupled with a common review date. The manager has dozens of reviews to work on. But somewhere around review number 20, the manager gets burned out and starts giving everyone a satisfactory response. Because it doesn’t require any written supporting statements
- Halo – An employee is rated highly in all areas because of one thing they do really well. I’ve seen this happen with sales people. Sales team hits the numbers and senior leadership loves it. But behind the scenes, they create havoc and doesn’t have the respect of their co-workers.
- Horn – On the flip side, an employee is rated as a poor performer because of one thing they don’t do well. For example, the administrative assistant who is great at everything but filing. It piles up because he puts it off – resulting in the company hiring a temp to get the filing caught up. In all other areas, he’s a rock star.
The appraisal plays a very important role in retention and motivation of all employees. HR teams Must nee to train the reviewers and managers on all the important aspects of performance appraisals to mitigate any kind of Flaws & Biasness including on all the aspects discussed above. performance appraisals should not only be fair but also looks to be fair from employees’ point of view.