3 Biases That Hijack Performance Reviews, and How to Address Them

Biases can affect any of an organization’s talent decisions, and there is perhaps no setting that shapes careers, salaries, and lives like annual performance evaluations. Research has found that several biases come up again and again when managers evaluate employees. Expedience bias privileges answers that are obvious, often at the expense of answers that are more relevant or useful. Distance bias makes us prefer information that is close at hand or more recent. And similarity bias leads us to prefer people who are similar to us in some way — who are part of our in-group. The authors offer advice for mitigating these biases in performance reviews.