Counteracting Bias with Competencies
If left to our own devices, we humans are pretty quick to make one-sided, poorly supported, and biased judgments about performance assessment. Those judgments penalize individuals from groups stereotyped as less competent, including women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, older employees, LGBT+, and blue-collar workers. Among these tendencies — Affinity Bias, where we give someeone positive points for coming from our hometown, going to the same school we did, or just reminding us of ourselves or our friends in some way. The Halo and Horns Effect is where we let one bad or good episode color our opinion and, closely related, Prove It Again bias, where people from underrepresented groups have to prove themselves over and over again, while majority group men do not. These are just few of many. There are some interesting evolutionary reasons for our tendency to value instinct over information (check out Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman), but we are less interested in causes here than in ways that work to counteract bias in choosing among job and promotion candidates and assessing job performance.
That’s where competencies come in. Competencies describe the skills, attributes and behaviors that lead to work success. Competency-based tools provide evidence and data to assess workers’ and candidates’ current skill and performance levels and insight into what gaps need to be filled and skills need to be developed going forward. This data -- how applicants and and workers meet clearly defined, objective criteria can be compared -- so people are evaluated on the same rubric. That can break the bias cycle where mothers face the assumption that work is not their first priority, Asian-American employees are expected to be good at math, but not so good at leadership roles, workers with disabilities are not even considered for certain jobs, and so on and so on. "When done with fidelity and discipline,” explains Alice Gibbs of On-Ramps, "competency-based interviewing helps sideline the individual personal preferences of hiring managers and interview teams by giving them a shared methodology for checking each others’ assessments and assumptions.”
Competency-based management can move you a long way towards creating the level playing field that your staff wants and deserves. The Harvard Business Review reported on a law firm, for example, that had reviewed responses to its open-ended performance review form and found instances of bias. It replaced their form with a new verson that included competencies for variours job categories and required that performance ratings were backed by at least three pieces of evidence. The results were measurable — people of color got more leadership mentions and the inclusion of constructive feedback for people of color jumped dramatically — from 17% in year 1 to 49% in year 2. Instances of constructive feedback increased for white women and white men, as well. Other changes were also evident. In year 1, reviews for white men were longer and more complex; in year 2, word count and language complexity were similar across all groups. Negative personality comments also sharply declined in year 2 for people of color: from 14% to 0%.
I first learned about the important role competencies can play in advancing DE & I, when Paradigm was hired as a consultant for the company where I worked. We later worked with HRSG — which helps organizations "harness the power of competencies." On-ramps and Avilar assist companies wanting to find a fairer and more effective measurement method, too. There are also resources out there to help you design a DIY competency program, including courses on LinkedIn Learning on Business Analyst, Leadership, Innovation and Hybrid Work competencies. This month I completed HRSG’s Certificate program in Competency-Based Management — a good refresher for me as I am working with a start-up client to define its Core and Job-specific competencies and integrate them into hiring and devlopment. I’ll write more on building a competency framework in a future post, but in the meantime — I’d love to hear your performance review experiences with competencies — or without.
