"Companies often rely on annual employee reviews to determine who gets promoted, who gets a raise, and who are the best candidates for layoffs. But research has shown the process can be influenced by factors other than job performance, such as gender and race. A new paper examines how those two factors played out in worker performance ratings at a multinational company, particularly in cases where bosses got a chance to see employee self-evaluations before doing their own."
"In such cases, manager scores closely correlated to how high or low employees had rated themselves, suggesting an "anchoring" effect. Overall, women and workers of color tended to give themselves lower marks. Women of color rated themselves the least favorably and got the lowest scores from managers. Managers gave out lower scores across the board when they didn't see employee self-appraisals beforehand."
"The Gazette recently spoke with the paper's co-author Iris Bohnet, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. In this edited conversation, Bohnet, a behavioral economist who studies gender, explains how gender and race appear to shape the way employees are assessed at work and what can be done about it."
Annual employee reviews influence promotions, raises, and layoff decisions, but ratings can reflect factors beyond performance, such as gender and race. A study at a multinational company compared manager ratings when managers saw employee self-evaluations before rating and when they did not. When managers saw self-evaluations, their scores closely tracked how employees rated themselves, indicating an anchoring effect. Women and workers of color tended to give themselves lower marks, with women of color rating themselves least favorably and receiving the lowest manager scores. Managers assigned lower scores overall when they did not see self-appraisals first.
Read at Harvard Gazette
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