Sample Executive Summary
Case Study 1 – Human Resources Policies
Issue
In the first year, Mark’s evaluation of Dan shows a halo effect; there is evidence that Dan has strong technical skills, yet Dan rated him “satisfactory” and noted that Dan was not sociable.
In the second year, Mark’s evaluation of Dan shows an anchoring bias; despite showing improvements, he made no adjustments and again rated Dan as “satisfactory”.
In the third year, Mark is demonstrating confirmation bias. He is actively ignoring information that does not support his view that Dan is a “satisfactory” performer; Dan’s performance evaluation was not adjusted for a major award given for creativity in problem solving, areas Dan has been working on for the last couple of years.
Background and Conclusions
Mark’s perceptual biases are a significant problem because Dan has been unnecessarily subjected to distributive and procedural injustices that may have affected his motivation. job performance and job satisfaction. Even more critical, Mark’s general tendencies toward biases in performance evaluations have the potential to spread to those that Mark coaches in writing performance evaluations or affect others who receive evaluations from Mark.
Recommendations
In the future, I recommend utilizing a 360-degree feedback system for gathering information related to all performance evaluations. Feedback from differing points of view helps to offset any one person’s biases.
I also recommend documenting performance-related information throughout the year. Biases can be offset with full information about an employee’s performance across time, since it’s less likely the information will be ignored or overlooked.
