By: Annette Sebastian
Everyone has biases that have formed from our upbringings and life experiences. We’ve also formed biases from information portrayed in the media. Oftentimes the biases we have are unconscious biases. These biases can be especially detrimental in the workplace when it hinders someone’s ability to contribute to their career.
Getting rid of biases should be a top priority in a company’s goals because studies show that a diverse and inclusive team brings more success. This is because everyone can show up confidently at work and use their voice to state their perspectives. When you have a diverse team, you have multiple perspectives that represent numerous communities. By incorporating ideas that are beneficial to a multitude of communities, a company can create goods and services that reach out to a larger demographic.
Here are a few things companies can do to make the workplace more diverse:
Expand your candidate pool.
Companies often hire through referrals, but people in your social network will most likely be very similar to you. In order to create a diverse team, it is possible to hire from different organizations such as the Society for Women Engineers (SWE) or Black Career Network. Numerous organizations like these exist which can make your application pool diverse.
Create a rubric.
Instead of simply looking through applications, it is important to create a list of objective qualifications that you are looking for in a candidate. With a rubric, the application process can be less biased by holding the same standards for everyone. It is also important to create interview questions that test the skills and qualities you are looking for. These techniques help evaluate everyone based on the same criteria.
Gently interrupt.
Oftentimes, women and people of color find that they do not get credit for their ideas. This is because people tend to notice good ideas from people that you expect to have good ideas. It’s important to become aware of this bias and interrupt the conversation when you see it happening. You can politely ask the person who first stated the idea to further their thoughts and give the credit to them. Also, if you notice someone who is having trouble contributing their ideas, you can ask them to weigh in.
Implement performance evaluation. Performance evaluations are beneficial because you can see an individual’s skills and development in work. But, women and people of color are often judged more and get comments on their personality. This should be avoided because evaluations are much more useful if they are based on concrete data. The evaluations can be critical details to the employees themselves if managers provide specific feedback on their performance. With the information, they can improve their performance and achieve their goals.
There is obviously much more that a company can do to work on removing destructive biases and the above list are only a couple of options that a company can implement.
Sources:
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/01/a-new-way-to-combat-bias-at-work
https://www.hrdconnect.com/2018/12/04/combatting-unconscious-bias-in-the-workplace/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity#
https://www.benefitnews.com/news/how-to-fight-against-unconscious-biases-in-the-workplace