Perception psychology is the way an individual not only see reality but the way they believe it to be. Their experiences and values play a great role on how a message is received. In psychology “perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information.” Perception can be described as an ultimate experience; this process always involves several of your sensors. We behave based on the way we perceive things. Things have importance to us based on how we see it, feel it and hear it.

Biases in the work place include not getting a job because you are too old, too young, not smart, too smart, and lazy. The perception of biased can occur because of an individual weight. According to an article by Anita Bruzzese, Gannett News Service “says some signs of unintentional intolerance in the workplace can include: High turnover among certain groups of people. For example, if people of particular ethnic groups — Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans — leave at higher rates, that is a red flag. • Poor performance. People often are blamed when things go wrong, but the real culprit may be a company culture where stress, lack of opportunity and exclusion leads to lower productivity. The vast majority of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are white males, and that is repeated even in the C ranks of management. If a company truly wants to walk the walk of diversity and inclusion, it needs to do so in the management ranks. All these biases can affect an individual perception in the work place, and the productivity of each individual. ”

An article on RetirementJobs.com by Patrick Rafter, says the bias of age discrimination is heading towards retirement. He went on to say “Older employees are electing to work longer than planned. Employers, meanwhile, increasingly understand the merits of retaining and hiring workers that connect with customers, and are dedicated. These employees turn over less often (than younger employees), and hold valuable lessons learned from their prior careers." Other work biases can be change if management takes the step to ensure workers follow the guidelines management set.

This is the reason it is imperative for a manager at any level to have a great understanding of perception and how it affect the productivity of the company. Associates pay attention to every action and word spoken by a manager and act accordingly to their perception. The organization has to work to ensure associates understand the goals and to help create the right perception.

Now, in order for a company to maintain the right perception through the eyes of its associates, they will have to practice what they preach. You can’t only hold some people accountable; you have to hold everyone to the same standards.

Perception is reality. You may find it difficult to please everyone because of how each individual perceived someone’s actions. Nevertheless, it is very important to be careful of perception. It is solely your responsibilities even thou you can’t control 100% the perception someone to have about you.

Citations:

Anita Bruzzese, Gannett News Service

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2008-07-11-soft-economy-biases_N.htm Retrieve 03/03/09

Peter Lindsay & Donald A. Norman: Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology, 1977. Retrieve 03/03/09

Patrick Rafter

http://www.retirementjobs.com/aboutus/press/01_23_2007b.html Retrieve 3/03/09