EFFECTS OF

BIASES ON EQUAL
OPPORTUNITIES
AT WORKPLACE
Group 8
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 Analysis of 04
What are Biases? Interview Cases

02 The Types of Biases Impact of Biases

05

03 Feedback from Surveys Recommendations

06
 TYPES OF BIASES

IIT
AI, ML
,
2+ yea
rs
e xp

Gender Bias Halo Effect Affinity Bias

• One gender preferred • All attributes of an employee • A person is preferred over
over another for certain are considered as top notch another simply because they
roles. owing to a single exceptional exhibit similar habits,
• Marked difference in the attribute. behaviour.
way men and women are
handled, recruited, • These attributes could be • Employees who share certain
promoted and given previous employer, alma habits like smoking, drinking
compensation at a matter, personality traits. with managers may end up
workplace. being favoured.
 TYPES OF BIASES

Ingroup Bias Age & Tenure Bias Beauty Bias

• Managers tend to be more • Older employees may be perceived • Individuals perceived as
favourable and inclined as less skilful or productive than Physically attractive can be
towards employees of their their younger counterparts. treated more favourably.
own groups over
• Promotions might be given to • They might have more
employees of an out group.
employees who have higher chances of being interviewed
• A group here can be
characterised by familiarity, connection with for jobs and hired, more
geographical identities, manager and experience over a likely to get frequent
ethnicity and religion. longer period. promotions.
 SURVEY DEMOGRAPHICS

Gender
Gender Years of work experience
diversity

32%
68% males
females

147 respondents 69 respondents

>5 years 2-5 yrs <2 yrs Freshers
36%(78) 44% (95) 11%(24) 9%(19)
In addition to diverse age groups (20-25 to
37+ and years of experience of reporting
managers(5 years to 15+ years)
Total respondents : 216
 IMPACT OF BIASES

Preferential treatments
The respondents who faced
situations where certain
employees get preferential 80%
treatment from managers,
Upset but continued
36% working
The respondents having
Lost motivation faced such a situation,
The respondents 20% upset but continued to
having faced such a work
situation, lost
motivation to work

Other 44% were a mix of indifferent(17%), having strained

relationship with manager(15%), reported such an act(4%)
 REASONS OBSERVED FOR BIASES

Long term familiarity with manager 29% Familiarity with manager for a longer term has
helped employees get preferential treatments

Same region/same language 26% Belonging to the same region or speaking same
language as their managers create biases

Matching behavioral habits like

Similar behavioral habits 15% smoking/drinking/partying creates a bond between
manager-employee : a reason for unconscious biases

Gender biases 10% 1/10 respondentsquitebelieved that gender biases exists:

low in proportion.

Others 20% Similar psychological choices(6%), graduates from

2022
2012

2015

same institute(5%) and others(8%)

 OBSERVATIONS FROM THE SURVEY

70% respondents believed that higher

Quite evident that people aware of the
weightage is given to soft skills over
biases prevalent in their
technical while assigning projects or
organizations/teams
during promotions
Yet, over 90% respondents didn’t
70% being a huge number, not all the
take any action; continued to work
cases would need excellent
communication skills.
Concern: What actions can be taken to
1) prevent such a behaviour 2) improve
One of the inferences can be: many a
openness of employees so that they can
times an employee lacking soft skills is
share is such biases are happening
unable to prove out his excellent
technical skills
 OBSERVATIONS FROM THE SURVEY
1/10 respondents believed that gender
biases exists: quite low in proportion. This
shows the improved situation of decreasing
gender biases with improving focus of the
organizations on gender diversity in recent
years.
However, there have been cases that some
interviewees observed females being
preferred for managerial role over equally
capable males due to increased focus on
gender diversity
We had quite mixed results on a
situational bias because of one’s
communication skills(command over
language, fluency, etc.) almost 50-50. This
can show that up to a certain level of work
experience there isn’t much attention
towards communication i.e. in the early
stage of careers or maybe the individual
contributors are preferred based on their
technical and domain specific skills and not
the communication skills.
 IMPACT OF BIASES
IMPACT ON EMPLOYEES

Reduced Openness to Disidentification from Changed Career

Reduced Engagement
Feedback Domains Aspirations

IMPACT ON ORGANISATIONS

Low Employee Costs Associated with

Productivity High Attrition Rates Low Diversity Low Loyalty to
Process Losses Organisation
 RECOMMENDATIONS
Gender Bias
Actions:

01
• Exclusion of gender sensitive data from application
• Set company policies for diversity hiring targets
related to gender
Striking Example:
• Atlassian removed gender coded language from
company’s job descriptions

Halo Effect
Actions:
02 • Opportunity maximisation
• Avoid elimination based on single attribute/factor
• Avoid project/work allocation to same team
member repeatedly
 RECOMMENDATIONS (Contd.)
Affinity Bias and InGroup Bias
Actions:
• Inclusion of external evaluation
03 • Company policies for diverse hiring based on
language and regional background
• Should consciously avoid favoritisms based on
possible similarities or affinity
Beauty/Attractiveness Bias
Actions:
• Presence of structured hiring process
04 • Predefined criterion of check-listed required items
for receiving promotions/opportunities
• Uniform dress-code in organization if absolutely
required
Tenure Bias and Age Bias
Actions:
• Avoid formation of pre-assumptions based on
05 experience and age of the person
• Robust mechanism for awarding of promotions or
opportunities
Striking Example:
• AMD’s innovation fund accessible to
all employees irrespective of their age