Is Your Bias Showing? How to spot and change
unconscious bias in the workplace
Unconscious bias matters. Greatly. Not just for the
people on the receiving end of bias, but also for the
leaders, teams and companies who are missing out
on a team that is diversified through age, race, gender
and other factors.
Where is the diversity?
During a session at a recent leadership training afternoon
that was focused on hiring practices, the presenter spent the
better part of an hour laying out his strategies for attracting
and retaining top talent. These processes, he said, were effective
beyond his company. They were attractive: online forms,
spreadsheets, detailed reports, company transparency – all
the latest and greatest in finding and keeping the best of
the best.
Then he pulled up a slide.
The slide contained an organizational chart with about
30 employees. Rather than just names, it also included faces.
The trouble was, nearly everyone in the company looked
alike. It was like a carbon copy of the same person with slightly
different smiles and hair colours. With some exceptions, nearly
everyone was the same gender and about the same age.
He went on to explain how his process vets through several
layers and has steps and stages for every potential hire, plus
BUSINESS
onboarding and technology that encourages collaboration
post-hire. Was this process fostering diversity? The answer,
plainly, was no.
Wired for bias
Like many of us, this presenter was dealing with unconscious
bias, also known as implicit bias. The company’s practices
were clearly favouring recruitment, hiring and retention of
a specific group of people – preferring one set of individuals
with certain qualities (gender and age range) over others.
The fact is, our brains are wired for this sort of thing. We’ve
all seen the studies: men are more likely to consider male
candidates more qualified, want to hire other men, give those
men a higher salary than women and are willing to invest in
those men. We also know age-based stereotyping is prevalent
in the workplace; one group of researchers call such biases
the “silent killer of collaboration and productivity.”
While it’s normal to think, “Well, that’s not me,” science
says otherwise.
In one study, MRI scans showed that when we’re confronted
with someone who is different than us (in this study, a different
race), the amygdala – known as the emotional processing
centre of the brain that deals with fears, threats and more –
lights up. The frontal cortex, which is involved in “forming
By Ron Price and Stacy Ennis
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