These meetings, in which supervisors discuss and adjust ratings across the company, are often intended to eradicate bias. In fact, they can have the opposite effect.
January 05, 2024
HBR Staff/Anton Vierietin/FabrikaCr/Getty Images
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Fair performance evaluations are crucial to a company’s success because they ensure that the most valuable employees are promoted and stay with the company. A number of companies have introduced calibration meetings — when supervisors discuss and adjust ratings across the company — in an attempt to eradicate bias by holding managers to consistent standards. However, new research suggests these meetings can introduce bias into the process in several ways. Small tweaks, such as teaching meeting participants what bias looks like, can help level the playing field.
Calibration meetings are typically one of the final steps in many companies’ performance-evaluation cycles. The process usually starts with a supervisor filling out evaluations for their direct reports, giving each an overall rating. The supervisor then attends a calibration meeting with other supervisors and senior leaders to discuss and adjust the ratings across the company. In the end, employees are rated twice: once by their supervisor and once by the calibration committee.
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Raafiya Ali Khan is a policy and research fellow at the Center for WorkLife Law, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
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Rachel M. Korn is the research director at the Center for WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law.