Dogs barking in the background. Toddler crawling around the floor, throwing things. Choppy internet connections interrupting page loads and interfering with video calls.

In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down. But disruptive distractions are only the tip of the iceberg. Social distancing, shelter-in-place orders, illness, and the subsequent economic toll have caused unprecedented challenges, for both people and organizations, and have increased stress exponentially.

In this context, clients have questions about multi-rater assessments: Will the heightened anxiety and fear discourage people from rating themselves honestly out of concern for their jobs? Will people rate others more favorably out of concern for their well-being?

In its latest report, KF360 in the Time of Crisis, the Korn Ferry Institute investigates whether patterns in ratings have changed over the past 18 months, signaling a potential impact related to the coronavirus outbreak. What researchers found, however, is that the stability in results has remained relatively constant over the year last, and since the onset of the pandemic.