Anything that is not zero-sum is going to be better than our old zero-sum system because one person’s gain was another’s loss under that system - which exacerbated the effects of bias.
Some possible alternatives include:
Bonuses for faculty members who do specific professional development activities, or help mentor other faculty members’ professional development (i.e. for objective, measurable activities).
Temporary or supplemental pay for taking on specific responsibilities.
Collaborative bonuses a.k.a. gain/success sharing: if we meet specific goals as a college (retention, admissions targets, “green” goals, savings on supplies, etc.), everyone gets a bonus.
More frequent evaluations with opportunities for small bonuses for good outcomes - these tend to mitigate gender bias by capturing women’s strengths better than once-a-year evaluations; some companies even offer small weekly bonuses to high performers.
Crowdsourced bonus recommendations in which faculty members recommend their peers for small bonuses in real time (this could be extended college-wide) - crowdsourcing has been shown to have potential for evening out the errors and biases of individuals.
Perks, like convenient parking or an workspace upgrade of some kind (e.g. a standing desk, or a new laptop or tablet), or being given permission to have a dog on campus, for high-performing faculty members.
Perks can also be offered to all: if we meet certain goals over several years, we get a really nice faculty lounge.
Perks relating to job flexibility - for example, as a reward for excellence a faculty member would be given the opportunity to adjust the allocation of teaching, service, and professional development, perhaps even be given a course release to pursue a project (the Perry Grant is an excellent example of this approach).
“Membership model” in which pay levels are targeted above market median and employees must perform well to stay; or a “bonding model” in which pay starts below market levels but rises more rapidly than in most organizations, and employees must stay and perform well to realize these gains (these models would aid in recruitment, retention of faculty, and faculty performance. They would help mitigate the effects of bias in that base salaries could be carefully reviewed for bias in a way that it’s difficult to review annual evaluations, but reviews would of course have to be structured carefully to prevent bias from influencing which faculty members stay or leave).
The argument has been made that faculty merit pay should not be abolished because grading of students by faculty is also likely subject to significant bias. This is a tu quoque fallacy - it suggests that because we are also subject to bias in our evaluations of students, that our claims that bias is a problem in evaluations is somehow less valid.
However, our belief is that bias exists in both instances, and that just as we believe that merit pay should be abolished, we also believe that Academic Affairs should take seriously the idea of doing away with grades, too, as many other institutions are starting to do.
If you use/adapt this list, please credit me with a link to this page! Thanks!
Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker, Assistant Professor, Core Division, Champlain College