Unconscious bias is based on unconscious expectations or stereotypes that shape people’s perceptions and behaviors toward other people. They are created unconsciously by culture and society, by family and by peer groups.
There are over 180 types of unconscious prejudice. Some of them affect people more in everyday life, others are mostly observed in the workplace. Unconscious bias in the workplace can affect whether the best person for a particular task is actually chosen, and whether good ideas are heard and recognized.
Proximity bias
Proximity bias is the assumption that those who work from home are less productive than those who work from the office. This type of bias suffered its boom in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many people first had to work remotely from the office. Even now, there are companies that have hybrid work and the labor of those who primarily work from home can be undervalued because of this prejudice.
Employers can avoid potential problems by continuing to use collaborative tools. When physical meetings are held, remote employees should be included via video link and encouraged to turn on their cameras.
Bias of recent contributions
In annual appraisal moments, managers are at risk of applying recency bias when giving appraisals to subordinates. Even though the supervisor must evaluate the employee for the entire year, he may focus only on recent events in the weeks before the evaluation.
Keeping notes on each individual’s contributions and rating on a uniform scale of criteria organizes intuitive decision making that may be influenced by biases and directs decision making toward qualities based on facts that can truly be measured.
A fundamental attribution error
This is a tendency to explain someone’s behavior based on internal factors such as personality characteristics while underestimating the influence of external factors. For example, an employee may not frequently turn on his camera during work calls. A person with a fundamental attribution error might say that this person is quiet, shy, and doesn’t play in a team.
This may subsequently disadvantage the person when deciding on promotion or task allocation.
