A new Slop University research poster interviews 118 office employees about a performance-review app's self-rating slider that opens every review already set to "meets expectations".
Interviews with 118 employees find the same default treated as an instruction by newer staff and as something to correct by longer-serving ones
Before a single question gets answered, a workplace performance review has often already made up its mind. A new Slop University research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement interviews 118 office employees at nine employers about the moment they open their review form and find the self-rating slider already resting on “meets expectations.”
The slider was set before I even logged in. I just had to decide whether to leave it there or explain why not.
— Solveig Adeyemi, Lecturer, School of Continuous Improvement
Led by Dr Adeyemi with Dr Dagny Okafor, Convenor of the School’s Evaluation of Evaluation program, the study tracked what employees said the pre-set position meant to them, rather than assuming it meant the same thing to everyone. Newer staff mostly described the default as an instruction worth keeping; longer-serving staff more often described it as something to correct before submitting, whether or not they actually moved it.
The School says the pattern has changed how closely it now watches its own review software. Under a new rule, any self-rating left within a tenth of a point of the pre-set default will be flagged for a manager follow-up conversation, regardless of what the employee says that position was meant to signal.
“A default that nobody questions isn’t neutral,” Okafor said. “It’s just an opinion nobody has to defend.”
The full research poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.dw0dyp.