As we approach the end of the year, managers are rushing to schedule and conduct annual employee evaluations. Without a doubt, the criteria for these evaluations have firmly shifted five years after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before Covid, office occupancy rates across the top 10 major U.S. metro areas hovered around 90%. According to recently published research by The Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, it is now 52%. Importantly, this 52% rate has been consistent for the past 2+ years. Therefore, coming into the office about half the time appears to be the new normal for U.S. city-dwelling workers.
https://johnsoncenter.org/blog/the-current-landscape-of-hybrid-and-remote-work-across-u-s-workers/
That said, office attendance cannot continue to serve as an indicator of employee investment, engagement and success. How then can a manager evaluate these and other areas of employee input, such as willingness to participate and professionalism?
Here’s one idea: Employee input, like hours worked, workplace behavior, and other easily quantifiable metrics should no longer be under the authority, or magisterium, of managers at all. Given the prevalence of hybrid work, employees ought to be exclusively evaluated based on their output, or the finished project or product.
In other words, the input and output of employees are now non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA.
What is NOMA?
The concept of NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria, was coined by the popular scientist Stephen Jay Gould. Gould uses the idea of magisterium —“a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution”— in a discussion of the veracity of religion, and how he, as a scientist, may not be able to ever find the answer.
In his 1999 book Rock of Ages, Gould explains that he believes science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria. “The net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work that way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap…To cite the old cliches…science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven.”
The validity of this specific use of NOMA is hotly contested. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, the biologist Richard Dawkins quips that it sounds terrific “right up until you give it a moment’s thought.” He continues, “Which religion anyway? The one we happen to have been brought up? Should we pick and choose among all the world’s religions until we find one whose moral teaching suits us? Why not just cut out the middle man and go straight for the moral choice without the religion?” Dawkins finally contends that religion is “unequivocally a scientific inquiry.”
It is not the goal here to take a stand one way or the other on the empirical nature of religion. Instead, it introduces the concept of NOMA as two mutually exclusive areas of understanding in the context of performance evaluations.
Employee input and output should be understood as NOMA, specifically for managers. Using Gould’s example, employee output is like a scientific inquiry, and the manager is a scientist. They have the tools and the knowledge to evaluate it. On the other hand, employee input is like religion, outside the manager’s realm of relevance.
Given the new normal of hybrid work, it is time for managers to create a new set of evaluation criteria. Look to NOMA for help.