Subjectivity and bias in performance review processes

Human Resources

Scenario 1 Performance Reviews

Problems with performance reviews

The first problem with performance reviews as a process is that they are inherently subjective. That is, although the performance review may have the trappings of objectivity and take the form of a rating scale correlated between numerous individuals, still, those individuals are often of similar backgrounds and places in the company hierarchy and the scale may be viewed in an arbitrary or different fashion by all.

The second problem with performance reviews is that because they are often given in person, the superior is often unwilling to be fully candid with the individual under review, given the one-on-one nature of the process. Quite simply, it is difficult to tell someone to their face they are doing a poor job. Thus, someone gains a false sense that they are doing well -- until they are let go, and offended they were not informed as to their poor performance soon enough, or how to change it.

On a different note, racial and gender biases can affect individual's perceptions of employees, just as they affect perceptions of ordinary individuals. When evidence of this is manifested, the company can be legally liable under federal civil rights laws. (EEOC, 2004) Or, conversely, even if performance reviewers are not actively prejudiced, different conversational and relational styles can cause subliminally a reviewer to feel a female or member of an ethnic or racial group underrepresented in the organization is just simply 'not like us,' and not worthy of promotion. (Tannen, 1996)

Lastly, superiors conducting the review may be unaware of 1-3, and have a heightened sense of their ability to evaluate in an objective fashion

Scenario 2

The anatomy of Millhouse's decision is problematic, as if the salesperson he encountered gleaned upon the much-criticized advertising strategy by charities that beg individuals to contribute the price of a cup of coffee to feed a starving child. Here, the salesperson does not even have the defense of charity for deploying such a strategy.

An alternative frame might be to ask -- but what if one does not want the coffee? Why not rationalize -- if I bring my own coffee, I can save forty cents a day! An alternative cost-cutting way of framing the decision, in other words, results in an entirely different solution to the purchase. Clearly, the issue at stake is not how much the object costs, but if one spends the defined amount, what sorts of financial dividends it will yield for the company. A cup of coffee may be well worth the forty cents, if it provides one with enough pleasure to get through difficult mornings and make 400,000 in a salary a year, one could rationalize -- but a poor investment if one does not like the taste and prefers a cup of tea.

There are moral considerations in framing one's attempts at persuasion -- surely one does not wish to misinform, or, as in the case of the aforementioned charity, emotionally manipulate one's audience. However, in this case, the individual at fault seems to be Millhouse, deploying his faulty judgment when the salesperson uses an analogy that is misguided. "Three Framed Victims," the scenario this is taken from, suggests that one must morally and ethnically evaluate one's audience, and not emotionally manipulate individuals with personal information that could sway them emotionally but not rationally to make poor decisions.

The implications of framing decisions are firstly to prevent a clear, unclouded, and ethically defined scenario that is not necessarily objective, or even two-sided but does not deploy emotionally clouded or ineffectual strategies to sway the human heart, rather than the human mind. An argument must be factual and ethical as well as containing pathos in its structure to be fully persuasive in a way that encourages the audience to adopt one's judgment.