Managers should be interested in perception because it helps them understand employee behavior in the following ways:

1. Managers need to recognize that their employees react to perceptions, not to reality. So whether a manager’s appraisal of an employee’s performance is actually objective and unbiased or whether the organization’s wage levels are among the highest in the community is less relevant than what employees perceive them to be. If individuals perceive appraisals to be biased or wage levels as low, they’ll behave as if those conditions actually exist.

2. Employees organize and interpret what they see, so there is always the potential for perceptual distortion. The message is clear: Pay close attention to how employees perceive both their jobs and management actions. Remember, the valuable employee who quits because of an inaccurate perception is just as great a loss to an organization as the valuable employee who quits for a valid reason.