How HRBPs Can Facilitate Impactful Performance

Calibrations
Published 25 July 2023 - ID G00795661 - 9 min read
By Analyst(s): HR Practitioner Research Team
Initiatives: Talent and Performance Management Resources for HR Professionals

HR professionals play an important role in successful

performance calibration sessions as neutral facilitators. This
research will cover ways to mitigate bias, conflict and meeting
fatigue through clear behavioral expectation setting, introduction of
data, and appropriate meeting formats.

Introduction
Organizational talent strategy is built on strong employee performance. Thus,
organizations must assess their workforces’ performance fairly, consistently and
accurately. Every manager has a unique way of measuring their direct reports’ success,
but issues may arise if some managers are more critical than others when rating
employees in the same role. This is where performance calibration comes into play.

In a perfect world, every calibration session would perfectly level the playing field,
eliminating variations in managerial performance ratings. However, in practice managers
and leaders face a multitude of challenges during calibration sessions, which frequently
lead to stress, conflict and an inaccurate picture of employee performance. Ramifications
may range from unfair employee compensation to disengaging high-performing talent.

These consequences are more than enough to obstruct an organization’s workforce.

HRBPs play a key role in calibration sessions as neutral facilitators. They must actively
prevent biased evaluations from managers and leaders, and control emotions and fatigue
levels within the group.

HRBPs should follow these three steps to be effective facilitators in calibration sessions:

1. Leverage inclusion roles and data to reduce unconscious bias in calibration.

2. Clearly define ground rules at the start of calibration sessions to manage emotions.

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 3. Manage group size and agendas to alleviate meeting fatigue.

1. Reduce Unconscious Bias in Calibration Through Inclusion Roles and

Data
Define Inclusion Roles
Based on managers’ personal experiences and value, there is potential for unconscious
bias during the calibration process and decisions. This can cause unfair assessments of
employees in the same role.

Given the subtlety and small sample size of biases, HRBPs may struggle to detect them,
and simply educating managers about bias is often insufficient to prevent it. Although
managers may know they should look out for bias during calibration, they might not know
what to do if or when they see it. The solution is to define clear roles around inclusion and
bias mitigation during calibration sessions, and come prepared with targeted performance
data. HRBPs can assign bias mitigation roles to specific participants during calibrations
to help managers understand what to do when they encounter bias.

To help managers recognize bias when they see it, HRBPs can assign certain session
participants specific bias-mitigation roles. These might include:

■ Note taker — Ensure strengths and development opportunities are for all employees
and documented for consistent follow-up.

■ Inclusion interrupter — Acknowledge bias in the discussion and encourage

participants to focus on facts rather than personal observations.

■ Agenda defender — Monitor agenda items and ensure the group allocates equal time
to all employees.

■ Parking lot attendant — Ensure tabled conversations are revisited and action items
are followed through for all employees.

Tips for Virtual Calibration Sessions

■ If the meeting platform has a “hand raise” feature, have managers use this to avoid
overlapping comments and questions.

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■ Assign a participant (or ideally a neutral third party) to alert the group to moments
of bias and prompt the group to discuss these moments and correct them.

Use Data
Bias can easily and unintentionally creep into talent decisions if they are not backed by
data. However, most organizations that provide data do so far in advance of performance
assessment and it does little to influence decision making. Or, they do so in such a generic
way that managers struggle to use the data for team-specific decisions. HRBPs should
therefore equip managers with data before, during and after assessment to shape how
they make decisions in the moment.

■ Before calibration — HR should help managers reflect on their potential blind spots
and collect data to objectively assess employees and overcome those blind spots.
For instance, if managers tend to overestimate the performance of an employee who
simply meets deadlines with deliverables of poor quality, an HRBP can provide the
manager with quality data to revisit the initial rating.

■ During calibration — HRBPs should check initial ratings by pulling reports that show
performance distribution by gender, salary grade, nationality and age for potential
anomalies. Based on the distribution anomalies identified, HRBPs should then
discuss potential biases, such as proximity bias or recency bias, in the calibration
discussions. See how Shell does it in Figure 1.

■ After calibration — HRBPs should use data to conduct equity checks to review
managers’ talent decisions and make any needed suggestions or changes.

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Figure 1: HRBP Calibration Preparation and Execution

2. Manage Emotional Managers by Clearly Defining Ground Rules at the

Start of the Session
Unsurprisingly, calibration sessions can become very tense and emotional, especially
when managers discuss their own employees. Managers tend to be emotionally invested
in their own direct reports and may even try to justify lower performance. In many cases,
these managers are not defending their subordinates so much as they are defending
themselves as managers. Thus, as facilitators, HRBPs must watch for conflicts and
address them before they get out of hand.

Managers with bigger personalities may dominate conversations about certain employees
to shift those employees’ performance appraisals in a certain direction. Strong rhetoric
and passionate speeches on an employee’s behalf are not inherently bad, but this emotion
may sometimes be used to misdirect the other managers in the room from the truth about
that employee’s performance.

One way to prevent emotional managers from dominating the session is to lay calibration
ground rules at the beginning of the session. These may include:

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■ Approach calibration from a team-oriented mindset. A great way to prevent heated
arguments between managers is to emphasize team-based calibration. The goal is
not to identify the best and worst managers but to determine the fair and accurate
performance of the employees in the business unit. HRBPs should inform managers
this exercise benefits the business unit as a whole because if employees find out
they are being appraised unfairly, the performance of the team at large will certainly
be adversely affected.

■ Focus on fairness. While giving high ratings will make the employees who receive
them happy, it could backfire if other employees do not feel that rating was deserved.
This could cause tension among employees and ultimately hurt production in the
business unit. To prevent perceived unfairness, HRBPs must ensure managers focus
on giving fair ratings during calibration.

■ Only focus on this year’s performance. Performance calibration sessions are already
quite long. Unnecessarily discussing an employee’s performance from previous
years not only lengthens the session but also unfairly affects managers’ perception
of that employee. HRBPs must ensure managers focus on the employee’s most
current performance and not on their performance from previous years.

■ Keep pushback constructive. Managers must give and receive feedback in the
calibration session. However, the session will break down if the feedback is not
constructive. HRBPs must help managers keep their feedback future-focused and
effective.

■ Emphasize the session as a learning opportunity. The primary reason for calibration
is fair employee assessment, but that is not the only benefit. HRBPs should
emphasize that the session is a learning opportunity, especially for less-tenured
managers, to help participants become better acquainted with performance
appraisals.

■ Do not expect perfection. HRBPs should stress that calibration is not a perfect
science. HRBPs and their managers should certainly do their best to fairly assess
employee performance, but at the same time, they must realize that perfect equity is
not achievable in a set amount of time.

Tips for Virtual Calibration Sessions

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■ Actively observe and take note of how participants communicate disagreements.
Via private chat during the session, or afterward, provide managers who seem more
aggressive on virtual channels with guidance on how to alter their behaviors.

■ Use private chats with participants who may be uncomfortable voicing a conflict
virtually and with those who don’t participate despite opportunities to do so.

3. Alleviate Meeting Fatigue by Managing Group Size and Agendas

The longer a calibration session is, the more likely managers will become stressed and
frustrated. Some organizations do one big calibration session and go role by role until the
calibration is finished, and these marathon sessions can continue for several hours.

In long sessions, managers may experience fatigue and be more likely to agree with an
opinion if it means leaving the meeting sooner. Furthermore, biases are more likely to
affect ratings, as managers may be too fatigued to actively monitor their decisions in the
meeting. In such cases, HRBPs must:

■ Be aware of manager sentiment in the room and take certain steps to manage group
size and the agenda to alleviate manager fatigue.

■ Set a specific amount of time for discussion and keep managers to a set schedule
throughout the session. Distributing the schedule before the meeting can set clear
expectations and allow managers to plan accordingly.

■ Break up larger groups into smaller sessions based on job roles to help managers
follow real-time decisions more easily. However, attendance limits should be set
beforehand to ensure the session remains manageable.

By following these steps, HRBPs can help ensure calibration sessions are productive and
effective, while minimizing the potential for biases to influence ratings.

HRBPs can also draw insights from Commvault’s (a data protection and data
management software company) adoption of technology in managing calibration
sessions to understand how they can help exhausted managers who may struggle to
actively monitor their decisions.

Case in Point: Commvault

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 As part of their approach, Commvault’s HR business
partners utilize a 16-box grid to assess employees’
performance and alignment with company values. The x-axis represents employees’
objective-based performance, while the y-axis represents their alignment with company
values (see Figure 2). This grid is displayed on a screen during calibration sessions,
enabling dynamic changes to employees’ positions on the grid based on ongoing
discussions among managers. The easy-to-use system allows managers to update the
location of employees in the 16-box during calibration sessions in real time

Figure 2: Commvault’s 4x4 Rating Map

Tips for Virtual Calibration Sessions

■ Keep text and visuals simple (bullets with most important points, plenty of white
space). Any slides or other visuals used should be designed to help participants
listen and stay engaged even when working from small screens.

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■ Use private chat boxes to remind presenters of time frames and use public chat
boxes to notify other participants of how much time is left for questions.

Conclusion
HRBPs play a vital role in ensuring fair and unbiased performance calibration sessions.
By defining roles around inclusion and bias mitigation, providing targeted data and
establishing ground rules, HRBPs can effectively reduce unconscious bias and promote
objective decision making. Managing group size and agendas also helps alleviate
meeting fatigue and further minimize biases. With these strategies and tips for
conducting calibration sessions, HRBPs can contribute to accurate and unbiased
performance calibration within their organizations.

Recommended by the Authors

Ignition Guide to Managing the Performance Calibration Process

3 Strategies to Reduce Bias in Performance Calibration

Tool: Virtual Performance Calibration Facilitator’s Guide

Tool: Manager Guide to Performance Evaluation and Calibration

Disclaimer: The organization (or organizations) profiled in this research is (or are)
provided for illustrative purposes only, and does (or do) not constitute an exhaustive list of
examples in this field nor an endorsement by Gartner of the organization or its offerings.

Document Revision History

HRBPs’ Critical Role in Performance Calibration - 13 October 2021

Performance Calibration Overview for HRBPs - 17 January 2019

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