Acknowledging 6 Biases in Performance Appraisal Evaluation

When managers and HR teams assess employees' performance, they may experience unconscious biases. This can lead to them evaluating the employees based on their own prejudices and assumptions, and not based on the employee's real effort. Since most employees see performance reviews as an opportunity to improve, unfair feedback and evaluations due to unconscious biases can affect morale. Here are six unconscious biases that affect fair performance evaluations:

1. New Bias: Can lead to managers evaluating employees based on how they have performed in the past, rather than based on the most important milestones during the year.

2. Proximity bias: Can lead managers to favor employees they see every day. This may lead them to rate hybrid employees and remote workers low in the belief that they are less productive.

3. Gender bias: Stereotypes can lead managers to emphasize qualities such as self-confidence and ambition in men, while judging the same qualities negatively in women.

4. Peer bias: May cause managers to favor people similar to themselves in terms of interests, language, gender, ethnicity, etc.

5. Contrast Bias: Can motivate managers to compare their team members to a particular high-performing employee, rather than seeing the employees as individuals.

6. Condescension: Occurs when employees give high marks to all employees without actually evaluating their performance.

Recognizing and addressing biases in performance appraisal is vital for fair evaluations. IceHrm provides tools for unbiased and transparent performance assessments.