How unconscious bias can destroy your performance management programme

Unconscious bias can quietly derail even the most well-intentioned performance management programme. When managers make decisions based on instinct, familiarity or assumptions rather than evidence, employees receive inconsistent feedback, unfair ratings, and unequal opportunities. In this article, we explain how unconscious bias shows up in performance reviews, why it matters and what organisations can do to reduce it.

It’s human nature to pick favourites.

We can’t pretend that managers never have favourite employees – but some managers are much better at hiding it than others.

But even those managers who make a concerted effort to treat everyone equally and avoid special treatment, it’s still likely that at least some degree of unconscious bias will seep in.

This can damage morale, lead to divisions within the team and result in lower engagement – but on top of the impact on your people, it can also hurt your business.

Let’s explore why unconscious bias can be so damaging for businesses – especially when it comes to performance management.

What is unconscious bias and why does it affect performance reviews?

Unconscious bias is the assumptions we make on a level we don’t even realise. It may be based on traits like gender, race, religion, sexuality, age, neurodivergence, heritage or personality type. We may not think we’re biased for or against certain groups, but our backgrounds, past experiences and current working environments mean it can be tricky to unpick certain ways of thinking or biases.

For instance, if you’ve only ever seen men in senior leadership roles, unconscious bias might make you think that men are better suited and more capable of these roles, which can lead to women being overlooked for promotions. 

Another example is a manager only choosing younger employees to attend events because they assume that older employees will have family responsibilities and won’t want to or be able to attend. These assumptions can mean that certain groups of employees get excluded from valuable development opportunities.

Common unconscious biases that skew performance management

What many people don't realise is that there are multiple types of unconscious bias that can show up at work.

If you suspect that unconscious bias might be affecting your workplace, or you have a niggling feeling about some patterns you've noticed, see if any of these sound familiar. This isn't an exhaustive list, but if you're noticing something like these in your business, your work culture may inadvertently be allowing unconscious bias to thrive:

Affinity bias

Managers tend to favour people who feel similar to them in personality, background or interests. This leads to more positive feedback, higher ratings and better opportunities for those they naturally relate to.

For instance, a male manager may instinctively rate their male employees more positively in performance reviews, entrust them with higher-profile tasks or put them forward for promotions or pay rises more frequently.  

Halo effect

A single strong positive trait or achievement can create an overly positive impression that spills into all other aspects of performance, often inflating ratings unfairly.

For instance, a salesperson may be exceptionally charismatic and a 'sweet talker'. This could lead their manager to overlook their missed sales targets because of their positive traits, allowing them to fly under the radar for longer than their colleagues.

Horns effect

On the flipside, one negative behaviour or incident can disproportionately influence the manager’s overall perception, resulting in harsher feedback and consistently lower ratings.

For instance, an account manager may have lost a key account in the last quarter. Following this, their manager may then view everything they do in a negative light, or see them as less competent or less deserving of new opportunities.

Confirmation bias

Managers notice and remember information that supports what they already believe about an employee, reinforcing pre-existing narratives — whether positive or negative.

For instance, a retail worker may receive a customer complaint for being rude. Whether their manager witnessed this incident or not, they may then perceive every brief comment or time spent working quietly away from others as rude.

Recency bias

Recent events or performance weigh more heavily than the full review period, meaning a great or poor few weeks can overshadow an otherwise consistent year.

For instance, a graphic designer can spend 11 months of the year producing fantastic work, but if a typo slips through on their most recent design, this is what the manager will flag in their performance review, whereas the same error made 8 months ago likely won't be judged as harshly.

The real impact of unconscious bias on your performance management programme

There’s already a power imbalance between managers and employees. Even in businesses with relatively flat structures, managers still hold more power than their employees, and in many organisations, it’s still the case that what the manager says, goes.

When unconscious bias comes from managers, it can cause huge problems at the individual, team and organisational levels. It will most likely show up in their day-to-day actions (such as consistently choosing employees with certain traits for the best opportunities, or dismissing ideas from those from a certain group), but it’s most obvious when it comes to performance management.

Some of the ways in which unconscious bias can affect your performance management programme include:

Inconsistent ratings and unclear standards

Unconscious bias often results in managers giving systematically better ratings to certain groups, even when performance levels are similar. In fact, the manager's own characteristics and views, as opposed to actual employee performance, could account for as much as 72% of the performance rating. This creates unclear standards and makes it difficult for employees to understand what 'good' actually looks like, because different people are effectively being measured against different expectations or being rewarded differently for the same outcomes.

Reduced trust and engagement

When employees notice that opportunities, feedback or levels of scrutiny differ based on who they are rather than what they deliver, trust in the manager and the wider process drops. 70% of employees say that bias negatively impacts their engagement at work, while 68% say it affects their productivity. Over time, people become less willing to share ideas or challenge decisions — especially if they’ve seen their contributions dismissed while others are given more leeway.

Barriers to fairness, diversity and inclusion

Bias can become embedded in everyday habits, such as consistently choosing certain types of employees for high-visibility projects or describing the same behaviour differently depending on who demonstrates it (e.g., 'assertive' for a man versus 'aggressive' for a woman). Many studies have surfaced worrying trends, such as people of colour routinely receiving lower performance ratings than white employees. These patterns quietly limit development for some groups and cement advantage for others.

Poorer business performance and decision-making

When biased judgements shape decisions about ratings, promotions and talent planning, organisations end up with an inaccurate picture of who their top performers really are. Over time, this leads to misallocated opportunities (organisations with fairer performance evaluation processes are 2.6x more likely to be high-performing businesses), frustrated high-potential employees and weaker overall performance — all reinforced by the existing power imbalance between managers and their teams.

5 ways to overcome managers’ unconscious bias

The thing with unconscious bias is that it can run rampant through an organisation, resulting in a snowball effect. If one or two managers hold certain biases, others can unconsciously pick up on them over time and adopt them into their own thinking and behaviours. 

Let’s take the example of male-dominated leadership teams. If a business of 100 people has 90% of its leadership roles filled by men, it could lead others to believe that men are better placed to lead the business, which could affect future hiring or internal career development decisions. And this isn’t just theoretical – just 11% of FTSE 100 CEOs are women, and research proves that women must work harder than their male counterparts to progress in their careers.

While these biased views may not be conscious, they’re still damaging, and because they’re unconscious, they can go unnoticed for a long, long time.

So what can businesses do to ensure that unconscious bias doesn’t become entrenched under the guise of ‘this is the way we’ve always done things’?

1. Provide ongoing unconscious bias training

Unconscious bias can be tricky to identify (because it’s unconscious!), and requires ongoing ‘rewiring’ of thought processes. That’s why you need specialist unconscious bias training – a one-off elearning module isn’t going to cut it if you really want to focus on long-term diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Storytelling is a powerful tool in unconscious bias training, so weaving in content from expert speakers will help make your training resonate with your managers. Interactive activities, discussion groups and peer-to-peer learning will also help maintain focus on eliminating unconscious bias over time. 

2. Standardise performance management processes

Clear, structured frameworks, including a company-wide skills matrix and a consistent process for giving feedback will help reduce the likelihood of unconscious bias slipping through. For instance, if certain employees get more feedback opportunities than others, it can give them an unfair advantage, while measuring employees against different standards creates an uneven playing field which naturally favours some people over others.

Every single manager should know the company’s standard performance management process like the back of their hand. Everyone should be on the same schedule, with the same cadence of performance management conversations and measured against the same standards.

3. Diversify the performance management process

A good way to minimise the impact of unconscious bias is to bring more people into the performance management process. Instead of a single one-on-one review between a manager and their employee, opening it up to the wider team can help bring fresh perspectives and help managers think about their employees differently.

360° reviews invite feedback from a range of colleagues, not just an employee’s direct manager. It could be teammates, colleagues from other teams or even the manager’s own manager, ensuring the direct manager gets a holistic understanding of an employee’s performance. For instance, perhaps the employee often works with another team and displays expertise in a ‘hidden skill’, which can be revealed as part of the 360° feedback collection process.

4. Encourage a culture of feedback

Bias thrives in silence – but often those affected by unconscious bias don’t feel comfortable publicly speaking up about it. That’s why it’s so important to build a culture of continuous feedback, where sharing experiences and recommending improvements is normalised and actively encouraged.

This also ties into a healthy learning culture. A positive learning culture recognises that people make mistakes and uses them as learning opportunities. In a healthy learning culture, everyone will acknowledge that unconscious bias exists, and everyone should feel comfortable starting conversations about it. If everyone feels safe to flag instances of bias, it will be easier to tackle it head-on, ensuring every voice is heard and valued.

5. Use AI to surface patterns and prompt fairer decisions

If it’s trained properly, AI can stick to the facts of the data it’s presented with, rather than succumbing to human bias. AI doesn’t inherently prefer Group A over Group B, and it can ignore all the context that could lead to bias in human relationships, ensuring it assesses employees based purely on their real performance.

Of course, if the AI isn’t trained correctly and continuously, bias can inadvertently slip in, which is why it’s so important to work with a trusted vendor and conduct regular audits – after all, AI bias is much easier to correct than human bias. But high-quality AI solutions which are trained on diverse, representative data can help flag inconsistencies, detect biased language and highlight trends that humans may overlook, ensuring everyone gets the credit they deserve, as well as unearthing valuable feedback points.

Unconscious bias: in summary

Unconscious bias has always been a challenge in the workplace, and to some extent it always will be. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to reduce unconscious bias – especially where employees' careers are concerned.

Here's a quick summary of everything you need to know about unconscious bias in the workplace and how to help overcome it:

• Unconscious bias affects how managers judge performance, give feedback and make promotion decisions.
• Common biases include affinity bias, halo/horns effect, confirmation bias and recency bias.
• These biases can distort ratings, damage trust and create unequal development pathways.
• Clear performance criteria, structured conversations and manager training help reduce bias
• Technology, nudges and better documentation can increase fairness and consistency.

How Helix can help reduce unconscious bias in performance management processes

Helix, our AI skills intelligence solution, is a really innovative way to reduce bias in your performance management processes. Instead of basing your judgements and decisions on gut feeling or opinions, you can base your assessments on real-world data.

Helix measures skills in the flow of work, silently joining your Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls to identify the skills and behaviours demonstrated in an employee's day-to-day work. It will then analyse these skills and send them a report about their strengths, growth opportunities and any potential areas of development. It can also work seamlessly with VeeCoach, our AI coach, to offer personalised coaching and roleplay scenarios.

This then gives employees and their managers access to real evidence of the skills that show up in their work. Instead of a manager basing their performance reviews only on the behaviours they have directly observed, or on their own opinions, they can assess employees based on what they're actually doing.

This can be particularly useful for typically overlooked groups, or those who tend to be on the receiving end of unconscious bias, as well as quieter employees who may not feel comfortable shouting about their skills and accomplishments. It also makes it much easier for managers to make a fair, objective assessment of each employee, and can reveal blind spots in both the manager and employee's picture of skills.

Unconscious bias FAQs