Biases mean unfairness.

How can any word that is a synonym of unfairness be described with pros,
surely it has its cons but it can only have pros for the individual who has been unjustifiably favored?

We are humans and it is natural to like some people and very normal to unlike some. We may consider
ourselves unbiased towards making managerial decisions regarding our subordinates but our
subconsciousness makes us evaluate people on our biases.

Biases at work is very common. It may start with the process of hiring and continue till an employee
given advantage leaves a firm. Biased decisions often lead to bad decisions for the organizations. Victims
of negative biases often underperform, feel demotivated and are not able to give maximum output.

Bias decision making have deleterious impacts in the following manner.

· Age is considered while making a selection of the employee. Certain age group or gender is
preferred, due to which the best applicant is not selected.

· Employees are at times selected based on family background, ethnicity/society/culture etc. hiring
an employee on such a criteria will not bring advantage to the firm/organization.

· The first impression of the employee becomes the last impression that often leads to unjust evaluation.
For example, an employee may have performed well the first time in front of a CEO but may not be
consistent with his performance throughout and as a result protects himself from landing in trouble at
the time of evaluation.

· Every employee has certain strengths and weakness but at times bias decisions make us think about
the negative aspects more than the positive. We often overlook the positive things and make a
judgment about an employee based on the negativity.

· In-group biases are also very common, an individual in a group is given favor based on any of the
above-mentioned standards.

· If an employee is in the good books of the manager, it may make the subordinate think of taking
undue advantage and as a result may underperform. Manager will overlook his attitude and
performance as well.

· Biases generally harm organizational culture.

Decision making is the core part of a manager’s job. The most important factor that affects the process
of decision making is the personality of the manager making the decision. Moral values and
psychological behavior of a manager is also reflected in the decisions made by him. Decision making
should be coherent but most of the time biases make the process of decision making not so rational.
Quick process of decision making is shown below.

Decision-making process identifying the problem choosing the best alternatives errors
and biases intuition Experienced based decisions group brainstorming on decision-
making conditions and risk factors of decision making

Best decisions are made when a manager is not bias and he/she follows through the steps or processes
of decision making.