10.9 Group Decision Making
Research shows that groups tend to make better decisions than individuals. Collaborative hiring or collaborative recruiting can best set you up to choose the right candidate. This critical decision impacts all areas of your business (Shuster, 2023).
Involving more people in the decision-making process can greatly improve the quality of hiring decisions and outcomes. However, involving more people can increase conflict, be more time-consuming and generate other challenges.
Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of group decision-making.
Advantages of Group Decisions
An advantage of involving groups in decision-making is that you can incorporate different perspectives and ideas. Different group members will each tend to have different preferences, opinions, biases, and stereotypes. One of the most significant benefits of collaborative hiring is its ability to reduce potential biases. When one person is responsible for hiring, their decision is more likely to be influenced by some form of bias (conscious or unconscious). Panel members are more likely to be careful in their assessments when they justify their ratings to other team members. For example, a hiring committee made up entirely of men might hire a larger proportion of male applicants (simply because they tend to prefer people who are more similar to themselves). However, with a hiring committee made up of men and women, the bias should be cancelled.
Numerous Canadian human rights tribunals have cited selection panels as an important factor in defending against discrimination suits (Hackett et al., 2009). A selection team or panel typically includes the HR manager, the supervisor and a support staff member. The more people you have reviewing the applicants’ information, the less likely information will be overlooked. These factors can lead to better hiring outcomes when a panel is involved in hiring.
Disadvantages of Group Decisions
Group decision-making is not without challenges. Some groups get bogged down by conflict, while others go to the opposite extreme and push for expedited agreement at the expense of quality discussions. Groupthink occurs when group members choose not to voice their concerns or objections as they would rather conform to the majority opinion to keep the peace and not annoy their coworkers.
Often, one individual in the group has more power or exerts more influence than others and discourages those with differing opinions from speaking up. If group members do not contribute their perspectives, the group will not benefit from group decision-making in the hiring process.
“Group Decision-Making” from Organizational Behavior by J. Stewart Black, David S. Bright, Donald G. Gardner, Eva Hartmann, Jason Lambert, Laura M. Leduc, Joy Leopold, James S. O’Rourke, Jon L. Pierce, Richard M. Steers, Siri Terjesen, Joseph Weiss is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—Modifications: Used paragraph one of Advantages of group decisions, edited; Used section Disadvantages of group decisions, edited.
