Organizational Network Analysis (ONA): What It Is and How HR Uses It
Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) maps real workplace collaboration to reveal hidden top performers and create fairer performance reviews.
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Performance reviews are broken.
"The data is clear: performance reviews aren't working for companies, managers, or employees."
of companies rate their performance process as highly or very effective at providing high quality feedback.
Source: The Talent Strategy Groupof employees see performance reviews as a partial or complete waste of time.
Source: People Mattersof employees strongly agree their performance reviews inspire them to improve.
Source: GallupWhy is this happening? Because the way people work has changed. With tools like Zoom and Slack, employees work in networks. They work cross functionally, ideate from the bottom up, and often are remote. In this networked world of work, managers have poor visibility into their direct reports' impact, leaving people leaders ill-equipped to accurately judge performance.
How work gets evaluated
How work gets done
The disconnect, between how work happens and how it's evaluated, leads to poor talent decisions, and results in frustration, inefficiency, and attrition. Companies, often blindsided, lose high-performers jeopardizing their ability to hit business goals.
It doesn't have to be this way.
What is organizational network analysis?
Solving today's challenges around measuring performance requires modernizing the century-old practice of performance reviews. The world of work has evolved. How we measure performance should too.
An effective method of measuring performance in today's networked world is Organizational network analysis (ONA). ONA measures and visualizes workplace interactions, analyzing their frequency and strength. When applied to performance management, ONA gives leaders visibility into the true impact of their employees.
How ONA works for performance management
ONA allows anyone at a company (i.e. a network) to evaluate anyone else. That evaluation can be positive or critical. What matters is that it mirrors the way we work today.
At the start of a performance review, employees are asked a few research-tested ONA questions. Examples include:
The first question measures influence, identifying a company's thought leaders and subject matter experts. The second question measures the "what" of performance, providing an opportunity to gather constructive feedback.
When this data is analyzed, it gives leaders visibility into who their high-performers are and those who need additional support. With these insights, they can confidently make promotions, PIPs, and retention decisions based on clear data.
ONA-powered performance reviews drive business impact
HR leaders want to drive business outcomes through impactful people decisions. ONA helps them achieve this in a data-driven way.
With attrition concerns during "The Great Resignation," Thoropass' executive team needed a way to identify mission critical employees and retain them. With ONA data, not only did they identify their top performers, they retained 100% of them.
See how Thoropass retained 100% of its top performers over a 12-month period
Explore ONA success stories ›When HR leaders have access to ONA data, they're able to make promotion and PIP decisions that drive business impact. A number of leaders have used the insights from ONA to make strategic people decisions that have had a material impact on their businesses.
ONA gives leaders the data to:
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Uncover employees who are mission critical to the business ✓'" />
Leverage ONA data to maximize retention ✓'" />
Reduce bias in the performance review process ✓'" />
Make talent decisions that are backed by data, not opinion A world where employees are recognized and rewarded for their hard work and positive impact, not their ability to play office politics, is within reach. With ONA-powered performance reviews, the true impact employees make at work takes center stage, giving leaders an accurate view of performance with less time and effort.
Book a 1:1 ONA Workshop
"[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."
Organizational Network Analysis: Frequently Asked Questions
What is organizational network analysis (ONA)?
Organizational network analysis (ONA) is a method of mapping the informal communication and collaboration patterns within an organization. Rather than relying on org charts — which show formal reporting relationships — ONA reveals who actually works with whom, who people turn to for advice, and who drives information flow across teams. It surfaces hidden influencers, collaboration gaps, and flight risks that traditional performance metrics miss.
How does ONA work in practice?
There are two approaches: passive ONA and active ONA. Passive ONA analyzes metadata from email, calendar, and messaging tools (who messages whom, when, how often) to infer collaboration patterns — without employee input. Active ONA surveys employees directly: "Who do you go to for advice? Who has made a significant positive impact on your work?" Confirm uses active ONA because it captures intent and relationship quality, not just communication frequency. Active ONA also avoids the privacy concerns of passive surveillance.
What can you learn from an ONA survey?
ONA surveys reveal: (1) Who are the real influencers in your organization — people others turn to regardless of title. (2) Hidden high performers whose cross-functional impact doesn't show up in manager ratings. (3) Collaboration silos — teams that operate in isolation and miss the integration the organization needs. (4) Flight risks — high-centrality employees whose departure would disrupt collaboration networks. (5) Onboarding effectiveness — how well new hires are integrating into the collaboration network over time.
How is ONA different from 360-degree feedback?
360-degree feedback asks: "How well does this person perform?" ONA asks: "Who do you work with and who makes an impact?" The questions are fundamentally different. 360 feedback captures performance assessment; ONA captures collaboration patterns. Both are useful, but ONA surfaces employees who are critical to the organization's functioning regardless of their formal performance rating — the connectors and knowledge brokers who don't show up in standard assessments.
What size company benefits from ONA?
ONA becomes most valuable at 50+ employees, when informal networks are too large for leaders to see directly. At this size, critical collaboration bottlenecks, hidden high performers, and at-risk relationships become invisible without structured measurement. Enterprise organizations (500+) use ONA to diagnose integration after mergers, identify collaboration silos, and inform succession planning at scale.
Get the ONA Playbook
Learn how to implement Organizational Network Analysis in your organization to surface hidden top performers, eliminate bias from performance reviews, and make data-driven talent decisions.
- What ONA is and why it matters for performance management
- How to collect and analyze collaboration network data
- Turning ONA insights into performance calibration decisions
- Using network analysis to identify hidden leaders and flight risks
- Privacy considerations and employee communication strategy
- 30-day implementation framework for your organization
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