One of the biggest challenges of hybrid work is to identify ways of impartially reviewing the performance of team members. Many employees are working from the office and others are working from home on selective days. The proximity of employees should not bias the performance review in their favour compared to employees working remotely.
Here are a few ideas that are hybrid-specific that will help make an impartial evaluation of both hybrid and in-person employees.
Emphasize cultures and values.
All employees must understand the vision and values of the organisation and act accordingly, irrespective of where they work. One way to reinforce this is through performance appraisal. No one in the organisation, irrespective of how well he performs at his work, should be allowed to ignore or do anything that goes against the values of the organisation.
During a performance review, one should reflect on the core values of the organisation and evaluate the employees’ performance against these core values. A value-based approach to evaluation creates a common platform to assess all employees irrespective of their location.
Track important metrics.
At the beginning of the evaluation period, agree upon a set of metrics that would be tracked regularly and can be accessed anytime on a common platform. The dashboard should reflect the quantifiable metrics live, especially revenue metrics and other evaluation parameters. It should also indicate how this influences the incentives that the employee is eligible for.
managers are held accountable for their engagement scores within their team. The performance metrics should be transparent and fair and can be applied across the organisation irrespective of their place of work,
Leverage technology
Once the metrics have been agreed upon mutually, technology must be used to ensure that there is no bias in the evaluation process. Managers must use these dashboards to have conversations with their employees and support them where necessary to improve their performance if they are lagging.
This helps focus the team leader’s attention, as well as the team member, on continuous development and improvement, lay the ground rules for incentives, pay raises and training and development opportunities throughout the year.
The evaluation process should change with time.
Many companies have switched to hybrid work quite suddenly and there is any past information to fall back upon. They have to learn and fine-tune the process as they work more in a hybrid environment and this is a learning experience for all including the organisation itself.
Hence, the evaluation process has to evolve as per the changed circumstances and co also performance metrics. Companies can no longer stay with the traditional metrics which would not be relevant under the changed circumstances,
A better way to define these metrics would be to look at customer satisfaction scores, core activities, company values and project implementation. Collaboration should be emphasised and employees need to lern to work as a team to get the work done and no longer try to do everything single-handedly.
Creative approaches to performance evaluations are necessary to be in tune with the changing times and expectations. This is especially true with a major shift in the way we get work done. It is necessary to evaluate employees on the performance metrics that are agreed on at the beginning of the period and have a live dashboard available to the employee and his manager that updates everyone on the progress made. this would ensure that the evaluation is free from bias and increase the trust and motivation of the employees.
Making Performance Reviews Fairer in a Hybrid Workplace
by Scott Behson
HBR 2023/02
R2G 