HOT TOPIC: REDUCING PERCEPTION BIAS
This month, we take a closer look at perception bias, its risks, and what leaders and HR can do to reduce it. Understanding perception bias and how to reduce it will make people decision more objective, create more engagement in your workforce, and deliver better business results.
HR and the Perception Gap – New PI Report
How well do your leaders understand their people? The Predictive Index recently surveyed 1,000 employees for their 2025 Workplace Perception Gap Survey. Responses revealed some glaring disconnects between their perceived value and the reality of their contributions. When employees feel their contributions are consistently undervalued, their motivation drops and they are likely to look for job opportunities elsewhere. And when leaders operate on misguided perceptions, the perception gap widens. Perception bias has surpassed burnout as the leading cause of employee disengagement at many organisations – but HR leaders can help. How a person feels about a situation will inform how they act and
respond, and how their colleagues respond should vary based on their behavioral makeup. Ultimately, that person’s workplace happiness hinges on the accuracy of that response – not the accuracy of their perception. And that’s where HR teams who lean on behavioral data to better understand their people can make an outsized impact. Read more in the new report ‘HR and the Perception Gap‘.
Seeing Through Perception Bias
The perception gap manifests in many ways. People aren’t always who they seem, especially in the workplace, where behavioral drives can show up subtly. HR can help mitigate perception bias at their organisation through the use of behavioral data. An individual’s behavioral pattern illuminates their strengths, their strongest drives, and their communication preferences, making you less reliant on preconceived notions of who they are or how they work. So what are the most common forms of workplace perception bias? Check out this infographic.
PI Software Pro-Tip: Send Job Assessment to Stakeholders
Asking your stakeholders to spend 10 minutes filling out The PI Job Assessment can help you facilitate a more objective discussion of the behavioral and cognitive job requirements for a particular role. In PI Software, click Create a New Job in the top right corner or in the Hire menu. Give the job a title, select ‘No close match’ under Job Family, and click the Create Job button. Select ‘Send to Stakeholders’ and fill in the names an email addresses of your contributors (the hiring manager and any other persons who know the role well). They will get an email invitation to fill out the JA, and once their results are in, you can visually compare them on the job page to see how aligned or misaligned your stakeholders are and agree on the final job target.
UNDERSTAND THE PEOPLE YOU WORK WITH
According to PI’s recent survey, nearly half (46%) believe their boss only somewhat or rarely understands their contributions – a disconnect that may be more damaging to businesses than burnout. The focus has been on workload-related burnout for a long time, but a more fundamental issue may be at play: When employees don’t feel accurately seen or understood, it creates a perception gap that directly impacts retention, performance, and innovation. This issue isn’t just about hurt feelings – this negatively impacts business results. While some amount of perception bias is inevitable, behavioral data can help minimise the impact of some of these biases. Get more nuanced insights into how people are wired by balancing and offsetting preconceived (and often misinformed) notions with objective data. Read more in PI’s new report ‘HR and the Perception Gap‘, or reach out to your PI consultant to hear more about how you can use The PI Behavioral Assessment to better understand the people you work with.
MINIMISING BIAS IN RECRUITMENT
We all have biases that sneak into our decisions, whether we recognise them or not, and the hiring process is no exception. Creating objective measures of both the job and the candidate by applying the The PI Job Assessment can help inoculate you against those biases. Send the JA to your stakeholders and help them agree on what the ideal candidate looks like – objectively. Not sure how? Join our next Focus Webinar on how to ‘Profile the Job like a Pro with PI JA’ (for PI certified Practitioners only). Find dates and sign up below.
