Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

by Laszlo Bock

Google’s rating system was (and is) distinctive in that it isn’t just the direct manager making the decision. A manager assigns a draft rating to an employee—say, “exceeds expectations”—based on nailing OKRs but tempered by other activities, like the volume of interviews completed, or extenuating circumstances such as a shift in the economy that might have affected ad revenues.xlivBefore this draft rating becomes final, groups of managers sit down together and review all of their employees’ draft ratings together in a process we call calibration. Calibration adds a step. But it is critical to ensure fairness. A manager’s assessments are compared to those of managers leading similar teams, and they review their employees collectively: A group of five to ten managers meet and project on a wall their fifty to a thousand employees, discuss individuals, and agree on a fair rating. This allows us to remove the pressure managers may feel from employees to inflate ratings. It also ensures that the end results reflect a shared expectation of performance, since managers often have different expectations for their people and interpret performance standards in their own idiosyncratic manner—just like in school, where some teachers were easy graders and others were tough. Calibration diminishes bias by forcing managers to justify their decisions to one another. It also increases perceptions of fairness among employees.117 The power of calibration in assessing people for ratings is not ...