To increase Fairness, 15Five recommends...

  • Separate compensation discussions from development one

    Encourage managers to separate compensation and development discussions. Frame the Best-Self Reviewβ„’ as a development discussion.

  • Leverage the Private Manager assessment in the Best-Self Reviewβ„’

    In the Best-Self Reviewβ„’, encourage managers to leverage the Private Manager Assessment, 15Five’s rating alternative that reduces bias to more objectively assess performance over time.

  • Use objective measures of both behaviors and results

    Encourage managers to use as many objective measures of behaviors and results as possible in their Private Manager Assessments.

  • Encourage joint goal setting

    Prior to the Best-Self Reviewβ„’ encourage managers to set performance, project, and / or task goals together with their team members. Include team members in the goal setting process so they feel heard and their voice is included.

  • Complete reviews on time

    Encourage managers to complete the Best-Self Reviewβ„’ on time to increase perceived fairness.

  • Follow up after a review

    Encourage People Ops/HR and managers to include a follow up question in the 15Five Check-in after a Best-Self Reviewβ„’ to see whether team members thought the process was fair and useful.

  • Ensure role clarity

    Encourage People Ops/HR to increase role clarity by adding team members job title and job description to career vision in 15Five.

  • Ensure clear expectations

    Encourage managers to ensure clear role responsibilities, performance expectations, and standards of excellence.

  • Have a role clarity conversation together

    Encourage managers and team members to review the job description together to ensure role clarity. When people know what’s expected of them, they feel safe to speak up.

  • Separate ratings and compensation

    Encourage People Ops/HR to separate ratings and compensation.

  • Ensure role clarity in reviews

    Encourage managers to leverage job description in the Best-Self Reviewβ„’ to ensure role clarity.

  • Ensure a fair compensation strategy

    Encourage People Ops/HR and leadership to ensure a fair compensation strategy that’s aligned to the market.

  • Clearly document the organization’s compensation policy

    Encourage People Ops/HR to clearly document the organization's compensation and rewards process.

  • Clearly communicate the organization's compensation policy

    Encourage People Ops and managers to clearly communicate the organization's compensation and rewards process.

Additional resources

15Five with Alan Colquitt: Why Your Ratings and Compensation Strategy is Holding You Back


Progressive Performance Management: Why Your Compensation Strategy is Holding You Back by Courtney Bigony


Performance Management 2.0: Improving Your Employee Motivation Strategy by Alan Colquitt


Harvard Meets Github: Using Evidence To Design The Future of Performance Reviews by Courtney Bigony


Driving Employee Engagement Through Effective Performance Management by Courtney Bigony


Best-Self Review Science Page


Next Generation Performance Management: The Triumph or Science of Myth and Superstition by Alan Colquitt (2017)

CIPD: Assessing What Works in Performance Management (2016)Β 


Performance Management Can Be Fixed: An On-the-Job Experential Learning Approach for Complex Behavior Change by Pulakos, Hanson, Arad & Moye (2015)Β 


SHRM: Performance Management that Makes a Difference: An Evidence-Based Approach by Dorsey & Hanson


HBR: The Performance Management Revolution by Capelli & Tavis (2016)Β 


HBR: Reinventing Performance Management by Buckingham & Goodall (2015)


HBR: Lets Not Kill Performance Evaluations Yet by Goler, Gale, & Grant (2016)


CEBMa Technical Assessment_REA on Performance Appraisals


CIPD_Performance AppraisalΒ 


Future Work Centre: The Death of the Performance ReviewΒ 


Twenty Best Practices for Just Performance Reviews by Posthuma & Campion (2008)Β 


Participation In The Performance Appraisal Process And Employee Reactions: A Meta-Analytic Review of Field Investigations by Cawley , Keeping, & Levy (1998)


Getting Rid of Performance Ratings: Genius or Folly? A Debate


HBR: Reinventing Performance Management by Buckingham & Goodall (2015)


ScienceForWork: Performance Evaluation - The "why" makes a difference


HBR: People Don't Want to Be Compared with Others. They Want to Be Compared with Themselves by Chub, Brockner, & Cremer (2018)Β 


Biased: Uncovering the Prejudice That Shape the Way We See, Think, & Do by Jennifer Eberhardt (2019)Β 


Managing Five Paradoxes of 360* Feedback


Preventing Rater Bias in 360* Feedback by Forcing Choice by Brown, Inceoglu & Lin


Does Performance Improve Following Multisource Feedback? A Theoretical Model, Meta-Analysis, and Review of Empirical Findings


360* Feedback: Accuracy, Reactions, and Perceptions of Usefulness


Advancing the State of 360* FeedbackΒ 


Can Multisource Feedback Change Perceptions of Goal Accomplishment, Self-Evaluations, and Performance-Based Outcomes?


A New Look at Within-Source Interrater Reliability of 360-Degree Feedback RatingsΒ 


The Evolution and Devolution of 360* FeedbackΒ 


Bigony, C. (2019). 15Five: Technology aligned to the science of thriving. (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

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