Achieving Meritocracy in the Workplace

Ensuring Meritocracy in Workplace

Meritocracies means hiring, rewarding, and promoting the best people, based on their merit

Paradox of Meritocracy

when managers believe their company is a meritocracy b/c of its formal evaluation and reward systems - it probably isn't

Experiment

Managers who were told their orgs valued merit - they tended to award men with bonuses - 12% more than women

Managers were not explicitly presented as meritocratic, female employees were rewarded with higher bonuses

Explanation - managers may have been self correcting for assumed bias in scores

Longitudunal study - found women and minorities lower salary increases with same performance scores

Solution of minimizing the gap - 2 improvements needed

Accountability

Transparency

Process behind reward system

Outcomes of system

Three changes to existing system

Appoint a performance reward committee

Senior managers must follow a formalized process for awards based on employee evals

Performance reward committee was granted authority to modify managers' decisions

Allows for transparency & accountability

Implementing organizational accountability and transparency

Significant reductions in gender, race, and foreign nationality gaps

Orgs need to gather data

Analyze the data in terms of demographic patterns

Organizational accountability

Organization transparency

Three Key Dimensions in designing systems

Set of procedures that make certain individuals responsible for ensuring fair distribution of rewards

Process accountability: People responsible for design & implementation of systems

Outcome accountability: People responsible for monitoring outcomes

Procedures that make relevant pay data accessible to certain individuals

Processes and criteria

Outcomes

Audiences

Companies need to determine who is responsible for setting up processes and criteria used to evaluate employees

Companies must determine who will collect and analyze the data, who will be responsible for ensuring decisions are merit based and who will get to see the analysis

Who will be allowed to design and implement changes in HR structure