3 Employee Assessment Biases and How to Avoid Them

While it’s natural for managers to exhibit prejudices when conducting employee assessments, it’s essential to limit your biases as much as you can. Otherwise, you are not providing effective reviews for your employees. In addition, your biases could lead to conflicts and other issues in the workplace.

Spot your biases before they affect your judgement and your performance appraisal process. Here are three common biases that managers often have during employee assessment.

1. Similarity
   
   It’s human nature to be drawn to people who are “like you.” Many managers find it a lot easier to give satisfactory assessments to employees who share the same traits, follow the same principles, or even have the same affiliations. It’s also why many companies have a coffee area for employees. The flip side of this is that you may find it difficult to provide sound reviews to those you can’t find any similarities with.To address this bias, some experts recommend looking for any similarities with the person you’re going to assess. It doesn’t matter how minor or major the similarities are for as long as you’re able to allow yourself to see the employee as part of your “in group.” A word of caution, however, similarity bias should not lead you to overlooking mistakes or oversights done by the employee.

2. Distance
   Distance bias shows our brain’s tendency to easily remember recent events over events that happened in the distant past. A great example is focusing on an employee’s unsatisfactory performance last week and dismissing their stellar performance three weeks ago.Distance bias often happens when you don’t have any data to consult when performing your evaluation.

   To avoid it, consider creating a performance monitoring sheet that you or your employees can fill out regularly. This way when it’s time to conduct an assessment, you have sufficient data to look back on to provide a fair review.

3. Length of Service
   An employee’s length of service doesn’t always indicate satisfactory performance. Unfortunately, some managers can’t help but put this into consideration when providing employee assessment.

   To avoid this type of bias, use the same assessment questions you’d use for a new employee. It’s best to stick with your company’s standards to assess both tenured and new employees.

Employee assessment is an essential part of people management. A proper evaluation offers potential growth both for your employees and your company. Don’t second guess performance reviews and assessments. When you’re not sure how to go about it, it’s best to reach out to experts for help.

Here at Alert Checks, we use different personality and performance indicators to avoid biases in our reviews and ensure effective employee assessments. Let us help you with your employee assessments. Fill out our contact form or call us at (866) 382-5378 for more information on our services.