The conventional expectations of employers are often unrealistically high. Most organisations try to do the right thing, and most HR teams regard holding the organisation to high standards as part of their role.

 When there is a decision to be taken which could adversely affect the employment rights of an employee, impartiality is held sacrosanct. However, can we really be impartial? Should we instead acknowledge our biases, and factor them into our decision-making? Organisations invest huge resources in carrying out employee investigations because they want to be fair, to exercise justice and be rigorous in their processes. However, making an assumption of impartiality and independence can be dangerous, unless we are prepared to acknowledge what would otherwise be unconscious biases.

Investigation

Imagine that you have been asked to conduct an investigation into an employee’s grievance (we will call the employee John). He insists that his manager (we will call him Richard) is harassing John by having placed him on an overly tough performance improvement plan. You begin to conduct the investigation…

1.      You first fall victim to the Framing Effect: the HRD who has appointed you has already given you the low down: John is trouble – too much sickness absence, and a poor attitude. As such you see John as a problem from the start – he has not been presented to you in a neutral way.

2.      Next you have to overcome your Ingroup Bias. You perceive yourself, and all of the HR and management team as protectors of the organisation. John is not a member of your group, so he doesn’t receive the same degree of amity.

3.      Time to meet the manager, Richard. Richard is super friendly and really well-dressed. These two superficial characteristics give rise to the Halo Effect: your first impression of him is positive, and this affects all further judgments that you make about him.

4.      Manager Richard then proceeds to talk you through the tale of woe that has led John to a performance management plan. John’s lapses in judgement, the poor outcomes and the mistakes made. Richard explains that he would not have taken those decisions, and explains why. Richard is exercising Hindsight Bias – we perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were - but the Halo Effect means that you do not realise this.

So poor old John who has raised the grievance is on the back foot from day one. The Primacy Bias – the tendency that we have to place more weight on information that we encounter first – is powerful, and John cannot make up this ground.

These biases – and there are many others - are always going to be at work. If you had seen employee John first; or if manager Richard had been unpleasant at the first meeting; then John’s position may have been more favourable rather than less.

The point is that if we assume that we are an objective and impartial investigator, able to exercise the wisdom of Solomon in our decisions and findings, then we are not just wrong but are also doing a disservice to the situation that we are meant to be helping to resolve.

Understanding what influences our perceptions of the decisions that we take, and that we are all human, means that we can address these, and take them into account. Unconscious bias training has been prevalent in equality and diversity programs for many years. It is now – rightly in my view - under increasing scrutiny because of the role it can play in justifying and excusing discrimination. However, there is a role for such training more generally, particularly for those of us who are required to exercise impartial and independent judgments that affect the careers of others. 

Think carefully about who conducts your investigations and how the case is presented at the outset.