Over the last few years, Textio has published an annual analysis of data about performance reviews. In 2022, we saw overwhelming patterns of bias by race, gender, and age across more than 25,000 reviews from 253 different organizations. Last year, we saw a clear mathematical connection between feedback quality and employee retention. People receiving low-quality written reviews are 63% more likely to quit in the next 12 months, even if the review is positive.
This year’s data looks specifically at the feedback received by an organization’s top performers. Astonishingly, we found that high performers get more feedback than everyone else—but it’s also the lowest quality. And high-performing women get the lowest-quality feedback of all.
High performers get more feedback…
On average, organizations recognize 5-15% of their employees as high performers. This small proportion of employees delivers a huge chunk of the work. A comprehensive study by Herman Aguinis and Ernest O’Boyle, Jr. from Indiana University found that high performers deliver 400% more productivity than the average performer.
Retaining this group is critical for organizational performance. Many companies create special career programs and stretch opportunities for their highest performers. Textio’s annual data set featuring reviews from more than 23,000 people shows that managers also give high performers the most feedback. On average, high performers get 1.5 times more feedback than everyone else. This is true regardless of employee race, gender, or other demographics.
…But it’s lower in quality
High performers may receive more feedback, but it’s notably lower in quality than everyone else’s. High-quality feedback focuses on someone’s specific behaviors rather than on their personality or other intangibles. It is grounded in specific examples of work deliverables, and it avoids commenting on people’s fixed characteristics such as their overall intelligence. Finally, fair feedback is accurate and not exaggerated.
This year’s Textio data shows that high performers receive lower-quality feedback in several dimensions. The feedback for high performers regardless of demographics is more likely to be based on a cliché and includes many more exaggerations and overstatements.
High performers' feedback also contains significantly more commentary about people’s fixed characteristics, both positive and negative. For instance, high performers are both more likely to be complimented for their intelligence, and more likely to be criticized for their abrasiveness.
High-performing women get the lowest quality feedback of all
Ten years ago, the data showed that high-performing women were much more likely to get feedback about their personalities than their male peers were. The women were also more likely to receive explicitly negative rather than constructive feedback overall.
Textio’s data from the last several reports validates that these findings still apply a decade later. Regardless of performance level, women get 22% more feedback about their personalities than everyone else. Women also get less actionable feedback, and what they do receive contains fewer specific examples. This is especially true for Black and Latina women. Black women in particular get nine times more feedback that is not actionable than white men receive.
Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that the high-performing women in this year’s study receive lower-quality feedback across the board. Their reviews are not just lower-quality than the feedback received by low and middle performers, it is also lower-quality than the feedback received by high-performing men.
On average, 27% of the sentences in performance reviews written for high performers contain an instance of problematic feedback. But when you focus just on the reviews written for high-performing women, 38% of the sentences contain some instance of problematic feedback.
In other words, though all high performers get extra scrutiny compared to their peers, manager feedback is especially unhelpful for high-performing women. This poses a problem not just for fairness, but for core organizational performance.
Last year’s comprehensive research showed that people who get low-quality performance reviews are much more likely to quit their jobs within a year. We also saw that the probability of someone quitting increases with each instance of problematic feedback received in their review. This year’s research shows why organizations have had such a difficult time retaining their top women.
If you wonder why your high-performing women are quitting, look at their performance reviews.
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