No matter how convinced you may be in your fairness and objectivity as a manager, you’re wrong. Even though most managers think that they treat every employee equally, trying to always work in their and the best interest of the company, this is not true. Numerous studies have shown that managers are susceptible to bias and favoritism without being aware of this. 

Psychologist claim that although people have this illusion of objectivity, they tend to make unfair decisions due to unconscious biases. When the unconscious prevails, you tend to make decisions based on deep-rooted stereotypes rather than on objective information. 

Apart from having implicit prejudice towards specific groups, you can be susceptible to, favoritism, fall into a conflict of interest, or have a tendency to overclaim your employees’ credits. You may not be fully aware of these unethical and unfair practices but that doesn’t minimize your fault or the negative effects they may have on your employees or the company culture. 

You need to be aware of these practices so that you can acknowledge them and replace them with more effective, ethical, and non-discriminating ones to create an inclusive, diverse workplace that offers equal opportunities for all employees.

Implicit Prejudice

Implicit prejudice represents deep-rooted stereotypes based on inaccurate associations people tend to make. Creating associations is crucial for learning but when you make incorrect associations like all grey people are old, or all poor people are lazy, you make incorrect associations that demonstrate implicit bias and may lead to unfair treatment. 

If you want to see how implicit bias affects your judgment, you may take an Implicit Associations Test (IAT.)

This test, created in the mid-90s makes people choose between positive and negative words and associate different pictures with these terms. The images shown in tests will vary on the type of IAT you want to take, and the bias in question i.e. race, skin tone, age, and so on. 

The results will show the level of implicit prejudice you have when you need to pair different sets of words with faces. And these are mostly surprising because people are unaware of this specific bias.

Not only that unconscious bias is unfair it can also be costly. Imagine if you fail to hire highly qualified candidates based on implicit prejudice regarding their race or gender. This wrong decision may cost you a failed onboarding process and the entire re-hiring process. Furthermore, if your decision to overlook employees for promotion or a pay raise is based on implicit prejudice, your company may end up in court with devastating financial and social consequences.

You Tend to Favour a Specific Group

People tend to do favors for someone they know, love, or are related to. This is a common social practice that isn’t frowned upon in general. There’s nothing wrong with helping your neighbor’s son get a scholarship. But expressing this type of favoritism in the workplace is unacceptable.

When managers decide to promote or give a pay raise to someone they feel close to, they discriminate against other employees who aren’t in the same position. While this behavior is highly discriminatory, this in-group favoritism is encouraged in the business world today. This reflects in the fact that employees who recommend their friends for specific positions can expect bonuses from the company. This in-group favoritism may seem like a positive practice of helping your near and dear, but it’s unethical and can affect interpersonal relationships in your company. 

You Tend to Overclaim Others’ Success

Believing in your competencies and being self-confident is natural and effective managers should be aware of their capabilities and contribution to the company. However, sometimes managers seem to overstress their contribution to a specific project undermining the effort of others. 

This unconscious overclaiming of others’ credit may affect your cross-team collaboration and overall performance. This bias can also decrease employee engagement. Because when employees who think that their hard work and effort deserve a reward find out that their managers gathered all the praises for a specific project’s success, they will become disengaged in their work until they finally decide to leave this unfair and unethical work environment.

How Can You Use Monitoring Data to Eliminate These Biases?

While these discriminatory practices can seriously affect cross-team collaboration, employee performance, and overall company reputation, they are commonplace and can be eliminated. 

If you want to become a better leader who treats their employees fairly and makes objective decisions, you should rely on accurate, real-time data.

By deploying employee monitoring software into your workflow, you’ll gain ample accurate data on employee day-to-day performance. You’ll be in sync with their time and attendance, web and app usage, and the time spent on various projects and tasks. You can use this data analysis to compile more detailed employee performance reports and paint a clear picture of someone’s productivity and contribution to significant projects.

Then you can make well-informed objective decisions about promotions, pay raises, and other rewards your employees deserve. You will also identify those who need additional support and guidance to excel in their roles. 

The power of data is that it doesn’t see color, age, or gender, it’s objective and depicts real-time situations. Therefore data-based decisions will do wonders for your team collaboration employee performance and morale. 

HR Future Staff Writer