Forget quiet quitters – HR pros are now looking for quiet contributors

It feels like there’s a shift happening in HR departments, and I think it’s a good one – their focus is changing from identifying the worst contributors and managing them out to finding the best contributors and learning how to keep them. In my view, it’s a much more constructive mindset.

In a recent conversation, Julia Psitos, VP People & Talent for NY-based Alfred, a management platform and home management app for renters, discussed how her company is improving the performance process with data – running broad surveys across the company asking questions like, “Who do you go to for help and advice?” and “Who energizes you?” Alfred has had 100% employee participation in these surveys, which have helped surface what Julia calls “quiet contributors” – people who aren’t good at self-promotion, but who are making a big impact on their teams and the company.

These people might not excel in traditional hierarchical performance reviews, which are typically based on the opinions of a single manager, and thus highly susceptible to lobbying by self-promoters. But now that most people are working in networks, with peers across departments, quiet contributors are easily found when you simply ask team members who’s making an impact on them.

Laika, a platform simplifying and automating information security compliances for businesses, is doing the same – they changed up the performance review process and identified 27 top performers across the company. Leadership then implemented retention measures that resulted in zero turnover among that group one year later.

Both companies relied on an approach called Organizational Network Analysis, which mirrors the way work is done today – in networks, rather than in strict, top-down hierarchies. Via surveys, all employees can recognize who they turn to for help and advice, and then the data is analyzed so HR teams can spot correlations and trends and identify true top performers. This creates a fairer playing field by expanding leaders’ visibility of an employee’s impact while ensuring performance decisions are based on larger sets of data rather than on the opinions of a single manager.

This approach is also relevant when a company is doing staff reductions – I recently spoke with the CEO of one such firm that had already used ONA-based reviews to identify its top performers, including quiet contributors. He consulted that list during a recent staff reduction to ensure none of those top performers had been selected for a layoff.

Related: How employers can address quiet quitting: Fix the performance review

It’s well understood that the traditional performance review process is plagued with problems, including bias and inefficiency. Even many HR pros dread them. Changing that dynamic, and bringing network-driven decision making into HR, as both Alfred and Laika have done, helps broaden inputs, and makes it much easier for companies to change their focus from identifying the worst to identifying the best.

Josh Merrill, co-founder and CEO, Confirm