The performance calibration tool that replaces stack ranking with data.
Confirm is the performance calibration tool built around what people actually do, not what managers remember. ONA evidence. AI profiles. Bias detection. Your calibration process: hours instead of weeks, fair instead of political.
Performance Calibration Tool
The performance calibration process is supposed to create fairness. It usually creates the opposite.
In theory, calibration ensures consistent standards across your organization. In practice, it's a room full of managers with conflicting biases, competing for budget, advocating loudly for their favorites, and quietly letting their least-visible employees slip to the bottom of the distribution.
The outcome is predictable: The loudest manager's team gets the best ratings. Employees who changed teams, went on parental leave, or worked remotely lose out. Women and minorities get systematically rated lower, not because of performance, but because of visibility and advocacy gaps.
Stack ranking makes it worse. Forced distributions turn calibration into a zero-sum game where managers compete against each other instead of aligning on standards. The result: collaboration breaks down, top performers leave rather than compete against their teammates, and the performance process becomes something everyone hates.
Then comp season hits. Most companies have invested in continuous feedback, regular 1-on-1s, even structured review cycles. But when it's time to make the actual call on raises and promotions, there's no structure. Managers walk into calibration with gut feelings. The decision comes down to whoever argues loudest, not what the data shows. This is how comp ends up based on vibes: not because managers are careless, but because they have no objective evidence to anchor the conversation.
Confirm replaces the debate with data. When every calibration discussion starts from ONA evidence, what employees actually did, who they worked with, what impact they drove, the session becomes a fact-finding exercise instead of a political one.
Objective evidence for every calibration discussion
Before your calibration session starts, Confirm generates an evidence profile for every employee. It draws from ONA data, who they collaborated with, what cross-functional impact they drove, where they were an essential node in the network, and combines it with performance history and AI-generated summaries. Managers arrive informed. Discussions focus on decisions, not reconstruction.
Pre-built calibration profiles
GPT-4 synthesizes months of ONA data, review history, and manager notes into concise profiles for every employee. No more starting calibration from a blank ratings spreadsheet.
Cross-functional impact visibility
ONA reveals contributions that cross team boundaries, the engineer who mentored five people on other teams, the PM who unblocked three departments. Traditional calibration misses all of it.
Bias detection that runs in real time
Confirm monitors your calibration session for the three bias patterns most likely to corrupt your ratings: recency bias (weighting recent events too heavily), affinity bias (rating people similar to yourself higher), and advocacy bias (outcomes driven by which manager argues loudest, not which employee performed best). Each flag comes with the ONA data to reset the discussion on objective ground.
Real-time bias flags
When a calibration discussion is drifting away from evidence and toward advocacy or recency, Confirm surfaces the objective data that recenters it.
Demographic disparity detection
After calibration is complete, Confirm analyzes rating distributions for unexpected demographic patterns, gender, ethnicity, location, and flags them for review before decisions are finalized.
Calibration in hours, not weeks
A typical calibration cycle spans 2-3 weeks: pre-work, manager preparation, multiple sessions, post-session debates, revisions. Confirm compresses this by preparing all the evidence before the session, facilitating real-time bias checks during it, and documenting decisions as they're made. Most teams complete calibration in a single 2-4 hour session, with better outcomes than the multi-week process they replaced.
Single-session calibration
ONA data is ready before you start. Profiles are pre-generated. Bias checks run automatically. Most teams finish what used to take weeks in one focused session.
Audit trail built in
Every calibration decision is documented with rationale and evidence, creating a legally defensible record of your performance calibration process.
The comp problem hiding in plain sight
You moved to continuous feedback. Your comp decisions still run on vibes.
Continuous feedback is a good system. But it breaks down when comp season hits. Without structured calibration, managers make comp calls from memory, recency, and gut instinct: who was vocal, who seemed engaged, who they're worried about losing. Confirmation bias does the rest.
Confirm's calibration layer is the bridge between feedback collection and defensible comp decisions. ONA data shows who drove real impact. AI-generated profiles give managers shared context before they talk numbers. Bias detection flags patterns before they become problems. The result: comp decisions your team can explain.
See Confirm in action →
"[Confirm finds] which workers are vital to the flow of information."
"An effective way of reducing bias and creating an even playing field."
"[Confirm] creates a fairer playing field by expanding leaders' visibility."
Explore the whole platform
Performance Reviews
Modern performance management powered by ONA and AI.
Explore this feature ›Engagement Surveys
Turn employee feedback into action, faster.
Explore this feature ›OKRs and Goals
Track OKRs and career goals in one place.
Explore this feature ›Talent Management
Make better talent decisions, without the bias.
Explore this feature ›Feedback and Growth
Empower continuous feedback and development.
Explore this feature ›Get the Calibration Playbook
Master the art of fair, efficient calibration sessions that surface hidden top performers and eliminate political debates. Learn proven facilitation techniques used by leading CHROs.
- Why calibration exists and what it's supposed to actually accomplish
- How to identify and neutralize visibility bias before it corrupts ratings
- Powerful questions that surface hidden contributors and cross-functional impact
- How to challenge ratings constructively without triggering defensiveness
- Facilitating productive conversations that actually change minds
- Real calibration conversations and lessons learned from the field
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Playbook
Proven strategies
See Confirm in action
See why forward-thinking enterprises use Confirm to make fairer, faster talent decisions and build high-performing teams.
