De-biasing people systems in your organisation
We’re often told the phrase ‘trust your gut!’. And in many situations, our intuition can guide us to make good, efficient decisions. However, these emotional, subconsciously-driven judgements also have the potential to play a part in shaping a biased world around us.
Whether we’re aware of it or not, there are deep-seated patterns, assumptions or interpretations that our brain refers to in making decisions. Bias, it seems, is a bit of an unfortunate by-product of our brain’s efficiency.
In a world with expanding diversity, bias becomes problematic. So, as a leader, how can you start to create greater equity in your organisation by reducing unconscious bias?
What is unconscious bias and why should we care?
Unconscious bias is a belief or perspective that we are seemingly unaware of, and that happens outside of our control. In other words, it occurs as an automatic judgement of people or situations from our subconscious. This bias is influenced by our background, cultural environment, the media we are exposed to, and personal experiences. Our unconscious bias is activated most in times of stress, time pressure or multi-tasking, so it’s no surprise it has a tendency to show up in our professional interactions.
Diversity of perspective, thought and experience is beneficial enough to your business. But there are studies to show that companies with greater diversity actually outperform their peers on a number of key economic indicators
● 35% greater financial returns with cultural diversity
● 25% greater financial returns on gender diversity
● 3-9% increase in sales revenue for every 1% increase in ethnic and gender diversity
The myth of meritocracy
Commonly, we see bias across race, gender and disability in the workplace. Most of us, if asked, wouldn’t consider we make any kind of conscious discrimination. Often, unconscious bias is completely out of alignment with our conscious values and more considered actions. And yet, the stats don’t lie:
● In 2020 around 8.3% of the labour force of Māori descent in NZ were unemployed (compared to 4.12% non-Māori in the same time period). 93% Māori in Aotearoa stated that they experience racism everyday, leading to huge impacts on both physical and mental health.
● In the public sector – men are paid more than women in each ethnic group, and Europeans are paid more on average than other ethnicities. Pacifica women are the lowest paid and earn 17.9% less than European men.
● Working-age (aged 15–64) people with disability are more likely to be unemployed than those without disability. The unemployment rate of working-age people with disability (10% or 113,000) is twice that of those without disability (4.6% or 544,000).
This quote from The Economist sums it up:
“Given a plethora of candidates, all with perfect CVs, selection committees continue to look for the ‘X’ factor and find, strangely enough, that it resides in people who look remarkably like themselves.”
So what’s the fix?
Bias has become a bit of a buzzword, and unconscious bias training is controversial in itself (there are debates over its efficacy). Which is why, at Kindred, we like to focus instead on building more inclusive process into your business. That is: the practical ways to design systems that actually help to reduce workplace bias.
Here’s what that looks like:
What could this mean for your business?
Here are some considerations to keep in mind.
Attracting and selecting your people
Recruitment is an obvious place to start when it comes to expanding diversity in your business, after all, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. But it’s not as straightforward as simply setting quotas or removing names from CVs.
○ Have clear standards and define the competencies and criteria for success
○ Consider job design - are there opportunities to offer part time, flexi hours or job share?
○ Cast the net wide with how and where you are attracting candidates. Write adverts with broad appeal and check your language to ensure it appeals to a range of candidates
○ Play the long game: start early to build the pipeline of talent in diverse groups
○ Use a standardised selection process and diverse panel of interviewers who can add different perspectives
Onboarding employees
As a leader, it’s up to you to understand and adapt to the needs of different employees. Be open to learning from your people, rather than using ‘the-way-it’s-always-been-done’ directives.
○ Be aware of the language you use, and adapt your approach to make all your employees feel a sense of belonging
○ Ask people about how they learn and the best ways to support them
Growth and development
Get to know your people; understand their goals and ambitions, and co-create roadmaps to get there.○ Establish targeted mentoring and development programmes, helping people connect with the others to build skills, knowledge and confidence
○ Create process around check-ins, feedback and professional development support
○ Take a structured approach when selecting people to take on secondment or exposure opportunities
Engagement
How are you supporting your people to thrive in a way that fits them? This could mean reshaping what success and contribution looks like in your business, and how you acknowledge and celebrate it.
○ Create a culture of belonging through recognising the different skills, experiences, view points that people bring to the table
○ Share counter-stereotypical examples in the workplace to support others in learning and challenging their biases
Performance management
Again, get to know your people. Understand their motivators, strengths and histories. Reframe before jumping into feedback and evaluation mode.○ Set consistent SMART objectives that are fair across your team
○ Gain insight from other employee voices and data – you might not interact with your employees as often as their co-workers do! Sourcing feedback from other team members (or customers) gives more context. Try to disprove your intuitions using feedback and available data
Meetings
If you’re constantly hearing from the same people, or you’ve got a culture of group think (going along with the status quo) or sunflower bias (agreeing with the most senior person in the room) it may be time to mix things up.○ Set a clear agenda and share this before the meeting
○ Create other channels for feedback before and after the meeting
○ Moderate the discussion to ensure everyone has a chance to speak and to encourage diverse points of view
○ Lead by example, using respectful language language and disagreeing respectfully
Your first step
For any of this to work, we’ve got to first slow our thinking down, moving our brain from the fast, subconscious decisions to the more deliberate and logical conscious ones.
The PAUSE framework is helpful for this:
● Pay attention to your situation, slow down and assess your reaction
● Acknowledge your assumptions
● Understand your perspective and impact
● Seek strategies to mitigate bias
● Examine your options and decide
Want to go deeper?
Debiasing your people systems is a process, not an event. It takes time to recognise, challenge and replace existing patterns and structures, and part of becoming an exceptional leader relies on your ability to self-reflect, focus on self-improvement and lead others in doing the same.
At Kindred, we run a workshop series that focuses on the neuropsychology behind bias and how our thoughts impact our actions and the importance of slowing your thinking down. We can also work alongside you in redesigning your processes to reduce bias, create more inclusive practices, and increase diversity right across the employee lifecycle from recruitment, to succession management.
If you’re curious to find out more, reach out to start the conversation at kiaora@kindredwork.co.nz