Imagine consistently performing well at work. Your manager appreciates your contributions, your colleagues respect you, and you feel like a valued member of the team.
But when it’s time to assign an important project or promote someone, you’re passed over.
You start to wonder: Is advancement really based on performance, or does it depend on who has the strongest relationship with leadership?
That question is becoming an important part of the conversation around performance management.
According to employee sentiment data informing Emtrain’s upcoming 2027 Culture Report, 84.1% of responses indicate employees feel their skills and efforts are fairly valued.
That’s encouraging. But here’s where the story changes.
Only 58.7% of responses are healthy when employees are asked whether leadership makes decisions about people without bias. And just 56.6% are healthy when asked whether opportunities are based on skills rather than bias.
In fact, 12.3% of responses indicate concerns that bias influences opportunities.
These findings reveal an important gap between feeling appreciated for your work and trusting the process that determines who gets ahead.
And for HR and organizational leaders, it raises a question worth investigating:
Are managers recognizing good performance without necessarily providing fair access to career opportunities?
Consider how advancement decisions happen in many organizations.
A manager needs someone to lead a new project. Rather than evaluating everyone’s skills and experience, they think of the employee they know best. Maybe it’s someone they regularly socialize with, someone who shares their communication style, or someone who has become part of their trusted circle.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the manager intends to discriminate.
But it does mean employees who aren’t part of that circle may never receive the same opportunities to demonstrate their abilities.
When Employees Feel Valued but Question Who Gets Ahead
There’s a difference between telling someone they’re doing a great job and giving them the opportunities to grow.
A manager might consistently praise an employee’s performance while unintentionally favoring other team members for promotions, mentorship, or high-visibility assignments.
Sometimes these decisions happen through informal relationships rather than an intentional evaluation of employees’ skills.
The manager may not even recognize what’s happening.
That’s why understanding employee experiences is so important. Traditional performance management metrics can tell organizations how employees are evaluated, but they don’t always reveal whether employees trust those evaluations or believe opportunities are distributed fairly.
When Workplace Relationships Influence Career Opportunities
In this Emtrain workplace scenario video, a successful sales employee named Jamal is preparing to leave his organization.
His manager, Barry, is surprised. Jamal has been a strong performer, earning recognition and contributing to the team’s success.
But Jamal explains something Barry hadn’t considered.
Many of the team’s informal networking opportunities happen outside working hours, including golf trips and sporting events. Jamal, who has a wife and young child, often cannot participate.
Over time, he notices that the people who socialize with leadership are also the people who receive new assignments and opportunities.
Barry never intended to exclude him. But the outcome is the same: Jamal believes his access to career opportunities is limited, and he decides to leave.
This is where performance management becomes more complicated than evaluating someone’s annual results.
Managers also influence who gets access to the experiences, relationships, and assignments that make future advancement possible.
If those opportunities are distributed informally, organizations may unintentionally reward proximity to leadership rather than employee performance.
What should managers be asking?
Before assigning an important project or recommending someone for advancement, managers should consider:
- Are we evaluating employees against consistent, job-related criteria?
- Have all qualified employees had an opportunity to demonstrate their skills?
- Are personal relationships influencing who receives high-visibility assignments?
- Could our informal team activities be excluding employees with different responsibilities or circumstances?
These questions help managers recognize blind spots before they become retaliation problems.
Mentorship May Be One of the Most Important Opportunities to Get Right
The culture data also provides some encouraging findings about career development.
77.0% of employees report confidence in their ability to grow their careers at their organization, while just 4.5% report that they are not confident.
And 67.2% say they’ve benefited from mentorship, compared with 6.2% who say they have not.
Those are positive signs. Employees see potential for growth, and mentorship is already helping many of them develop professionally.
But here’s another question worth asking:
Who receives mentorship, and who has to ask for it?
In this above Emtrain workplace scenario illustrates how this can happen.
Vicki approaches her manager, Mike, because she’s noticed him mentoring other employees but hasn’t experienced the same level of support.
Initially, Mike is surprised by her concern.
After reflecting on the situation, he recognizes that he hasn’t been giving the women on his team the same coaching and attention he provides to some of the men.
Vicki didn’t need Mike to create an entirely new development program. She needed him to recognize the difference in how he was supporting employees and take action.
And that’s what he does.
The situation highlights a practical lesson for managers: mentorship shouldn’t depend entirely on who feels comfortable asking, who has the strongest personal connection, or who naturally receives the most attention.
Managers can create more equitable development opportunities by regularly discussing career goals, offering coaching, and ensuring employees know how to access mentorship.
Is Your Performance Management Training Asking the Right Questions?
Traditional performance management training teaches managers how to set expectations, evaluate employee performance, document decisions, and deliver feedback.
Those skills are important.
But completing a training course doesn’t necessarily tell HR whether employees believe those practices are happening consistently.
An employee may understand the organization’s performance review process while believing their manager favors certain colleagues.
A manager may know that opportunities should be based on skills but still make decisions through informal relationships.
That’s why Emtrain approaches training as more than a way to deliver information. It can also become an opportunity to listen to what employees are experiencing.
For example, Emtrain’s employee sentiment questions include:
“Our team uses a structured process to evaluate employee performance.”
This helps organizations understand whether employees perceive performance assessments as consistent and structured.
“People on my team use their power to create opportunities for others.”
This explores whether employees see people in positions of authority helping others develop.
“I have benefitted from someone in my organization mentoring and up-leveling my skills.”
This provides insight into employees’ actual experiences with mentorship.
And questions about whether leadership decisions are free from bias and opportunities are based on skills can help reveal concerns about fairness.
A correct answer to a training question shows that someone understands a concept. An employee sentiment response provides a different kind of information: how people experience that concept in their workplace.
Neither replaces a fair investigation or a review of actual promotion decisions. But together, they can help organizations identify where closer attention is needed.
Turn Employee Feedback Into Better Management Practices
Once an organization identifies concerns about performance evaluations, mentorship, or career opportunities, what should happen next?
The answer isn’t necessarily another hour-long compliance course for everyone.
Sometimes the problem is more specific.
Managers may need guidance on recognizing bias in decision-making. They may need better coaching skills, more consistent performance review criteria, or support in encouraging employees to speak up about career development.
Emtrain’s Management & Leadership Development Learning Track brings these skills together through foundational courses and short, targeted Microlessons.
Organizations can build a stronger foundation through courses such as Performance Management, Coaching and Mentoring, Managing Within the Law, and Hiring Skills and Restrictions.
Then, throughout the year, managers can reinforce specific skills through short lessons focused on giving effective feedback, facing criticism, making better decisions, encouraging employees to speak up, and helping team members develop.
This creates a more continuous approach:
Train managers on good practices. Listen to employees about their experiences. Identify gaps. Reinforce the skills that need attention.
For example, if employees report limited mentorship opportunities, an organization can examine how managers provide coaching and assign targeted learning to support more consistent development conversations.
If employees raise concerns about biased opportunity decisions, HR can review the processes used to assign projects and evaluate candidates, while helping managers recognize how personal preferences may affect their judgment.
The goal is not simply to increase training completion. It’s to improve the management behaviors and organizational processes that influence employee experiences.
Explore the Management & Leadership Development Learning Track.
Better Performance Management Starts With Listening
One of the most encouraging findings in the upcoming 2027 Culture Report is that many employees still see a future with their organizations.
They feel valued. They see opportunities to grow. Many have benefited from mentorship.
That’s a foundation worth protecting.
But organizations also need to understand why some employees question whether advancement decisions are fair.
Sometimes the issue isn’t an obvious policy violation. It may be an informal assignment process, inconsistent coaching, or a manager who hasn’t recognized how their relationships influence decisions.
These are the kinds of workplace experiences that annual performance reviews and training completion reports may not reveal on their own.
By asking employees about their experiences, organizations can better understand where their management practices are working and where they need attention.
And by connecting those insights to practical leadership development, they can help managers make fairer decisions, support employee growth, and create opportunities based on skills and performance.
Emtrain’s 2027 Culture Report – Coming Soon
Explore what employees are saying about career growth, leadership decisions, mentorship, and workplace culture in Emtrain’s upcoming 2027 Culture Report.
