AXIS Network’s Vision 2030 Strategy series next focus is Transparent Promotion and Performance Models. We call for the industry to tackle hidden or underlying systemic bias in these processes, ensuring that they are applied fairly and equitably across the whole organisation.
Vision 2030 is AXIS Network’s invitation to the industry to imagine what more we could achieve if we accelerate progress towards a fully inclusive and diverse industry. Effective promotion, performance reviews and career development models are key requirements for retention and development in every business.
Bias can creep into business systems and processes over time, and so they require businesses to be proactive in refreshing and updating them to ensure they remain relevant for the changing workforce. Updating processes to ensure transparency and fairness, can support retention and progression of the widest possible group of talent within the business. We believe that’s good for business and can ensure the industry’s best possible shot at tackling the energy transition; with a strong, engaged and motivated, diverse workforce.
Gartner studies show that transparent promotion and career development processes are more essential than ever to engage employees and in turn, supporting business success. Harvard Business Review highlights: ‘The evidence is clear. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in organisations longer.’ Transparent processes also has the additional benefit of enhancing diversity across the business, increasing innovation and performance; vital to us achieving our energy transition goals.
Traditional promotion and career development processes can be vulnerable to bias as they may rely on a one to one conversation without any additional checks and balances. They can also be vulnerable when they are processes that have not been assessed frequently to ensure they remain fit for purpose, are designed for a more homogeneous workforce or are based on dated people practices. According to research by Harvard Business Review, women are also 1.4 times more likely to receive critical subjective feedback (as opposed to either positive feedback or critical objective feedback).
Bias is something that all decisions, including business decisions are vulnerable to. The more subjective the decision and the less data driven, the more the decision can be impacted by bias. To address systemic bias, businesses can redesign or update promotion and career development processes to:
Ensure the promotion process is transparent to all
Provide clear career pathways for all job families
Ensure decisions are discussed by a diverse panel/group of leaders
Ensure any performance management or career development system used is clear to all and provide managers and staff with training.
Unconscious and conscious bias can impact all decisions. We recommend that clear systems or structures are set out and followed by businesses for promotion and performance processes, ensuring objective, data-driven decisions.
A transparent and fair promotion process should be applied consistently across the business, including features such as:
Define and publish eligibility criteria where different assessment elements are defined clearly for each career pathway and job family.
Set consistent and clear evaluation criteria with guidance on scoring levels, making the decision less subjective.
Analysis of Data by HR and the leadership to ensure anomalies or patterns are reviewed, discussed and challenged further for bias.
Where used, an inclusive performance evaluation model should be driven centrally by the business and include features such as:
Goals and performance measures defined in advance, ensuring employees know what it is they will be assessed on, at the beginning of the year.
Continuous performance evaluation throughout the year, with two way conversations to share ideas, concerns and feedback. This ensures employees know how they’re doing and can adjust behaviours to suit in a timely manner.
Feedback from multiple sources, designed into the process, preferably a diverse range of people and roles, to provide a balanced view of an individual’s performance.
We believe that transparent and fair promotion and career development processes supports the retention of personnel and progression of diverse talent within the business. In our VISION 2030: We built the energy industry so we know we can change it we set out many examples of why this is important, including from McKinsey’s Diversity Wins which states that ‘the most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability’. This report also reveals that the potential for improved performance isn’t a small one stating that ‘a substantial differential likelihood of outperformance—48 percent—separates the most from the least gender-diverse companies.’
For our sector to successfully deliver the Energy Transition, we must achieve Vision 2030. Developing and promoting a diverse work force allows us to innovate more effectively and achieve our goals as an industry.