Removing Bias From Performance Reviews: 7 Key Strategies

The goal of a performance review should be to help employees improve, ultimately building a stronger, more effective workforce. They also allow employers to identify those who are already making exceptional contributions to the organisation and reward them appropriately. 

But performance reviews are usually conducted by managers… who are only human, after all. That means there’s a big risk of bias of all types creeping into the review process. We’ll discuss what you can do about it in this article. 

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What is unconscious bias? 

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Unconscious bias is when a person’s judgement of another person is influenced by the prejudices they hold. And, whether we like it or not, every one of us is guilty of letting unconscious bias impact our decisions. 

When bias creeps into performance reviews, employees might end up being given a higher or lower rating than they actually deserve. Since performance reviews are so often tied to compensation and promotions, this can have a devastating impact on employees’ career progression. 

Given the high stakes at play, ensuring that performance evaluation processes are free from bias is a key priority for many employers. But, according to a 2022 survey, only one in three employees feel that their organisation’s current performance review process is fair. Keep reading to learn how to change that. 

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The different types of bias that can impact your performance reviews

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Performance reviews are usually handled on a team-by-team basis by individual managers, with little consistency on how ratings are applied across the organisation. That means that all sorts of different types of bias can easily creep in. Here are some of the most common types of bias that might be causing problems in your organisation: 

• Recency bias: This is the tendency to focus on things that happened in the recent past rather than taking a balanced view of the entire period being assessed. For example, an employee who performed exceptionally during the first half of the year may receive a lower rating than someone whose overall performance was more average, but who recently had a big achievement.

• Primacy bias: Humans tend to over-focus on information they learn early in a relationship and pay less attention to facts garnered later on. That means that, if a manager’s first impression of an employee is lacklustre, they may find it hard to change their mind later. 

• Proximity bias: According to an SHRM study, 67% of managers feel that remote employees are more easily replaced than those who work on-site. That’s probably down to proximity bias, which is the tendency of some managers to assess people more favourably if they have more frequent in-person interactions with them. 

• Halo and horns effect: The halo and horns effects are two related phenomena that involve allowing one positive or negative characteristic to overshadow other aspects of an employee’s performance. For example, an employee who is an exceptional communicator might receive a high performance rating even if they’re severely lacking in other areas. 

• Centrality bias: if you’ve ever completed a survey and found yourself selecting the ‘neither agree nor disagree’ option for almost every question, you may have experienced centrality bias. This is the tendency to rate things in the middle of a rating scale. For example, managers using a five-point scale for performance reviews might end up giving most employees a score of three due to their centrality bias. 

• Affinity bias: Also referred to as ‘similar-to-me bias’, affinity bias is a tendency to rate people who most resemble ourselves more highly than those who are different. This can be based on all sorts of things, including an employee’s gender, race, educational background, age and experiences. Over time, it can result in organisations becoming more homogenous as employees who are most similar to existing leaders are consistently promoted over others. 

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7 strategies to reduce bias in your performance reviews 

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Bias may be unconscious, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. Here are seven actionable strategies you can use to eliminate bias from your performance review process. 

1. Use objective performance criteria 

Vague, undefined performance criteria are one of the biggest drivers of unconscious bias in performance reviews. After all, if a manager isn’t given clear benchmarks to measure their reports against, all they have to work with is their own judgement. And that’s likely to be informed by various prejudices and assumptions. 

Instead of asking open-ended questions, organisations should clearly define indicators of success and provide managers with key, demonstrable behaviours to look for. These should be standardised across scorecards or evaluation forms to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

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2. Evaluate multiple dimensions of performance 

Instead of relying solely on a manager’s subjective opinion, organisations should evaluate employees’ performance from different perspectives. One way of doing this is to use 360° feedback, which involves gathering input from an employee’s manager, peers and direct reports — plus the employee themselves. This provides a more holistic (and realistic) understanding of the employee’s performance.

Structuring performance reviews so they assess different facets of an employee’s work can also help managers avoid letting a particular strength or weakness colour the rest of their review. For example, while assessing an employee’s technical skills may be necessary for some roles, considering how they relate to others is also important.

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3. Make performance an ongoing dialogue

Unless they’re blessed by superhuman powers of recall, it can be difficult for managers to properly assess an employee’s performance over an entire year. This can lead to recency bias impacting reviews. Employers can avoid this by encouraging managers to collect information on each employee’s performance throughout the review period. For example, they could request feedback from other employees whenever someone completes an important task or project. 

Another option is for managers to organise regular check-ins with their reports to discuss progress and set goals together. Not only does this make for fairer, less biassed reviews, but it can also improve performance by helping managers to spot problems early and provide employees with guidance when they need it. 

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4. Think carefully about scales and numbers 

Many managers avoid extremes by rating most employees towards the middle of a scale — which is a form of bias. To avoid this, it’s important to think carefully about the scales and assessment frameworks you provide. 

One easy solution is to avoid even-numbered scales that allow managers to sit on the fence. For example, a four-point scale instead of a five-point one requires managers to make a choice one way or another. Clarifying what each number on a scale actually means is also valuable to both managers and employees. 

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5. Require specificity from managers 

Asking managers to be as specific as possible in their performance evaluations can be an effective way of reducing bias. That’s because it forces them to step back and assess whether their evaluation is based on solid facts — or something else. 

This approach is also beneficial to employees since it means the feedback they receive is more likely to be actionable and constructive. According to research by HBR, female employees are much more likely to receive feedback that’s vague and not tied to company objectives. Requiring specificity from managers can help to ensure your performance management processes work for all employees. 

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6. Invest in unconscious bias training 

One potential way to reduce the impact of bias is to provide managers with training that encourages them to identify and acknowledge their biases. As a starting point, the Implicit Associations Test is a free online tool that anyone can use to assess the biases they may not know they hold. 

However, employers should be careful with this approach, since training alone is unlikely to solve the problem of bias in performance reviews. Unconscious bias is notoriously difficult to correct precisely because people are unaware of it. That means that training should be part of a broader strategy that also involves setting up systems so bias can’t slip through. 

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7. Calibrate reviews across the organisation 

When performance scales and ratings are vague and unclear, they’re unlikely to be applied consistently across an organisation. But even with the right tools in place, managers are human beings. That means it’s only natural that each one has their own way of defining performance. 

To ensure consistency, it’s a good idea to gather managers together to calibrate performance reviews once everyone has completed their evaluations. This ensures that everyone is talking about the same things when they say someone is ‘above average’, for example — and avoids employees receiving an unfair rating simply because their manager is overly harsh or lenient. 

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Recognising and acknowledging unconscious bias 

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It’s in the name: unconscious bias isn’t something we do on purpose. And we all have it, even if we think we don’t. But, while we may not be able to eliminate bias from our brains entirely, employers have a duty to their employees to ensure it doesn’t have an impact on their performance reviews (and, by extension, their pay and progression). 

Recognising and acknowledging the biases we hold is a good first step, but it’s usually not enough to fully stamp out bias and its impact on performance reviews. Instead, organisations should focus on building systems and processes that leave no room for bias, in everything from recruitment to performance to compensation. 

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