How the Halo Effect Can Lead to Unfair Favoritism in Workplaces

What if the most likeable person on your team is also the one holding it back? That’s the halo effect in action: an unconscious bias leading us to attribute numerous positive qualities to someone based solely on our admiration for one aspect of their character or skills.

While harmless in some situations, the halo effect can create systemic biases in workplace settings that influence hiring decisions, promotions, team dynamics, and overall organizational performance. 

Toolkit: Implementing SHRM’s BEAM Framework for Inclusion

Here’s How to Spot and Prevent the Halo Effect at Every Level

The halo effect shows up differently depending on your role in the organization — from shaping leadership perception to influencing everyday feedback. Below are examples of how CEOs, HR leaders, and HR professionals can recognize and reduce this bias in their work. 

How CEOs Can Prevent One Strength from Overshadowing the Rest

CEOs should be especially wary of the halo effect. Everyone on an executive team brings a defining strength — and in many cases, that strength is essential to their role. But problems arise when that one strength leads others to assume broad competence in unrelated areas, such as believing that an analytical leader is also highly empathetic or that a visionary is naturally detail-oriented. Here’s how CEOs can check for this bias in their leadership assessments and decision-making.

• Cultivate a culture in which team members feel safe offering candid feedback, even to the top. 
• Build formal feedback loops such as 360-degree reviews into executive evaluations to surface performance gaps.

How HR Leaders Can Ensure Evaluations Stay Objective

HR leaders are often responsible for shaping how performance is assessed and rewarded. When halo bias slips into these systems, certain traits — such as confidence and charm — can unfairly boost evaluations, overshadowing more relevant skills. The strategies below can help HR leaders build more balanced and evidence-based evaluation processes.

• Prioritize skills-first hiring and promotions by clearly defining the competencies needed for each role. 
• Require panel interviews and skills assessments to reduce the risk of bias.
• Use people analytics to track post-promotion outcomes and improve future decisions.

Specialty Credential: Skills First

How HR Professionals Can Keep Praise Grounded in Performance 

HR professionals influence everyday recognition and feedback culture. If praise is driven by personality rather than outcomes, it can erode fairness and make others feel unseen. Here are some ways HR professionals can reinforce fair, performance-based recognition.

• Standardize performance reviews with prompts that address multiple skill areas.
• Audit internal communications (e.g., employee newsletters or training materials) to ensure consistent messaging around performance expectations.

The Halo Effect Is Just One of Many 

The halo effect can distort decision-making across hiring, promotions, and performance reviews — leading to favoritism, inconsistency, and lost potential. Recognizing and addressing the halo effect is a key step toward building more inclusive, equitable workplaces. But it doesn’t stop there. 

“When organizations take unconscious bias seriously, they unlock more varied, innovative ways of getting work done. It shifts the focus from limitations to possibilities,” Alonso said. 

Taking bias seriously is essential because the halo effect is just one of many. Explore nine other unconscious biases that may be influencing your organization in ways you can’t see yet.