Free Guide
The ONA Playbook
How to use Organizational Network Analysis to reveal hidden high performers, reduce bias, and make smarter talent decisions
Your org chart shows who reports to whom. ONA shows who actually drives outcomes.
- ✓ Find hidden high performers your reviews miss
- ✓ Surface 4 bias types embedded in manager reviews
- ✓ See Confirm's exact 5-step ONA process
- ✓ 30-day action plan to run ONA at your company
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The ONA Playbook
What is Organizational Network Analysis?
ONA maps how work actually flows in your organization — not how the org chart says it should flow.
Every organization has two power structures. The formal one lives on the org chart — titles, reporting lines, sign-off authority.
The informal one is where most of the real work happens: the person everyone goes to when they're stuck, the quiet contributor who shaped that product decision without credit, the connector who bridges three departments and keeps cross-functional projects from falling apart.
Traditional performance reviews are almost entirely blind to the informal network. They rely on what managers observe — which in modern organizations is typically 20% or less of what employees actually do.
ONA makes the invisible visible. It reveals who the real influencers are, where information flows and where it doesn't, and which employees are making outsized impact without the title or visibility to match.
How ONA collects data
Employees answer brief questions during the review cycle: who they seek advice from, who's making outstanding impact, who needs support. 90 seconds per person. Rich network data for the organization.
Collaboration metadata from tools you already use — Slack, email, calendar, GitHub — analyzed at the network level. No content is read. Only patterns: who works with whom, how often, across what teams.
Using ONA to reduce bias in performance reviews
Manager-only reviews concentrate bias at the exact moment it matters most: promotion decisions.
Proximity bias
Managers favor employees they interact with most. Remote workers lose. ONA measures contribution across the full organization, not just to the direct manager.
Affinity bias
Managers rate employees who remind them of themselves more highly. ONA data doesn't know or care about shared backgrounds, alma maters, or communication styles.
Recency bias
A strong final quarter can override a weak year — and vice versa. ONA data captures patterns across the full review period, not just what's memorable at review time.
Attribution bias
In collaborative work, credit flows to the most senior or most visible person. ONA shows the actual collaboration network, making it harder to systematically take credit for others' work.
"ONA gives us a check on our own biases. When my ratings diverge significantly from what the network says, that's worth understanding — not ignoring."Joe Bast, VP People
ONA built into your performance review cycle
Confirm integrates ONA natively. Not a separate tool, not a one-off survey — ONA runs as part of every review cycle.
ONA questions at cycle start
Every employee answers three research-tested questions. 90 seconds. No manager filter. Anyone can nominate anyone — a junior engineer can surface a VP's impact, or flag that a colleague needs support.
Network data analyzed
Confirm maps nominations across the organization, identifying high-centrality nodes (informal leaders), frequently nominated high performers, and employees flagged for support. The graph includes cross-functional connections your managers couldn't see.
Managers write assessments
Managers complete their reviews before seeing ONA data — preventing anchoring bias in the other direction. Their genuine assessment is captured first.
ONA enriches calibration
In calibration, HR and managers see where ratings align or diverge from network data. Systematic gaps are surfaced. Conversations are anchored in evidence. Quiet contributors get their moment.
Decisions backed by data
Promotions, PIPs, retention moves, and succession plans are made with the full picture — manager observation plus organizational network evidence. Not just who was visible. Who actually drove impact.
What HR leaders say about ONA
"With ONA data, not only did we identify our top performers, we retained 100% of them."Julia Psitos, Head of People, Thoropass
"Hands down, the organizational network analysis approach is the best I've seen for identifying who is actually making an impact."Joe Bast, VP People
"Confirm is the first tool that lets me see the behavioral side with holistic evidence — not just what managers report."Joanna Yeoh, VP People
What's inside the ONA Playbook
10+ pages of practical guidance. No fluff. Free with a demo request.
What is Organizational Network Analysis?
The methodology, where it comes from, and why it's uniquely suited to measuring performance in a networked world of work.
Why traditional performance reviews miss so much
The design flaw baked into manager-only reviews — and why it gets worse as organizations go remote and cross-functional.
Hidden influence networks and why they matter
The four types of informal leaders ONA surfaces — and what happens to organizations that can't see them.
Using ONA to detect and reduce bias
Four bias types ONA counters, and how to integrate ONA data into calibration to surface patterns that manager ratings alone can't reveal.
ONA in practice: the Confirm approach
The exact ONA questions we use, how the data is analyzed, and how it feeds into calibration and decisions.
ONA use cases by role
How CHROs, HRBPs, and managers each use ONA differently — and the specific decisions it improves for each.
30-day ONA action plan
A week-by-week plan for integrating ONA into your next review cycle. Week 1: baseline. Week 2: process design. Week 3: pilot. Week 4: calibration.
Common questions and misconceptions
Is ONA just a peer review? Will employees game it? Is the data too complex? Honest answers to the questions HR leaders always ask.
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Frequently asked questions about ONA
What is Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) in HR?
ONA maps how employees actually interact and collaborate — revealing informal influence networks, hidden high performers, and collaboration patterns that traditional performance reviews miss. Unlike org charts that show reporting lines, ONA shows who people actually work with, trust, and seek advice from. Applied to performance management, ONA gives HR leaders visibility into true employee contribution beyond what any single manager can observe.
How does ONA improve performance management decisions?
ONA expands the data used to evaluate employees beyond a single manager's observation. In modern organizations where work happens across teams and tools, managers may only see 20% of what their reports actually do. ONA surfaces peer nominations, cross-functional collaboration data, and influence network patterns — providing a more complete picture of who is making impact, who needs support, and who is being systematically undervalued.
Is ONA the same as surveillance or employee monitoring?
No. Survey-based ONA (the primary method) is a voluntary, structured survey — similar to a peer review but designed to surface network patterns rather than collect qualitative feedback. Passive ONA analyzes metadata (who communicates with whom, when, how often) but never reads message content. No keystroke logging. No screen recording. Confirm's ONA meets SOC 2 and GDPR standards.
How is ONA different from 360-degree feedback?
360 feedback collects qualitative assessments from a pre-selected group of peers. ONA collects network-level data (nomination patterns) from the full organization, without pre-selection. The insight comes from the structure of the network — who nominates whom, across what teams, in what patterns — not just the content of individual reviews. ONA is also faster and generates less feedback fatigue.
Can ONA help reduce bias in performance reviews?
Yes. ONA provides objective network data that doesn't depend on proximity, visibility, or affinity — the primary drivers of bias in traditional manager-led reviews. By comparing manager ratings to ONA data, HR teams can surface systematic undervaluation, identify employees overlooked due to quiet contribution styles, and have evidence-based calibration conversations rather than relying purely on manager opinion.
See ONA in action at your company
Book a 1:1 ONA Workshop. We'll show you exactly how ONA works with your data, your org structure, and your review process. Free. 30 minutes.
Used by CHROs at high-growth companies. No commitment required.