Tag Archive for: workplace diversity

What Is Unconscious Bias and Why Does It Matter?

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Over the last 18 months we’ve seen a dramatic increase in requests for training solutions connected to building diversity and managing unconscious bias.  Clients are typically looking for training to grow awareness and understanding. We then challenge them to explore actual biases in their organisation and how to mitigate against them. This blog post tackles the first steps … and rather than talking about them let’s start this blog with one of the ways we often start the training.

How we often start training sessions on unconscious bias – and why…

In our training programmes we typically start with brain teasers to get trainees engaged and interested right away. The value of these brain teasers is the discussions that they lead to, where trainees can link the bias they have experienced in a simple quiz question to a real issue or example from their professional lives. The little ‘jolt’ they get from getting a simple question wrong can be a powerful way of nudging them to think differently about what they see and experience in the workplace, and lead to actions.

Try it for yourself. This post has nine questions that should get you thinking!

9 Questions to Uncover Unconscious Bias

If you struggled to find the right answers, you were probably using intuition to solve the two problems. Intuition is a great tool that allows our minds to make quick decisions using only limited data. Our intuitions were vital to our survival in the past; if you were walking through The Black Forest 2500 years ago and you heard a loud roar behind you, RUN! Turning around to analyse the source of the noise would not have been a good idea. We still carry this intuitive decision-making tool today, but our modern world is more complex, less black and white and often requires a different decision-making approach.

Why do we start our training with these kinds of exercises? Simply because the best way of understanding unconscious bias is to experience it for yourself.

But I thought intuition was useful – how does it lead to biases?

In order to make quick decisions, our intuitive system uses filters to remove all but the most obvious information. This is why many people struggle with the 9 questions: the obvious answer is not always the correct one. One of the most common filters is ‘bias’ and this is where unconscious bias comes from; it’s simply our intuitive system filtering out information which is not readily available in favour of a quick, simple answer. Watch the short video below to learn more about this thinking system and its impact.

Why does unconscious bias matter in the workplace?

Over-using our intuitive ‘System 1’ thinking can have negative consequences in our professional lives. To make this much more concrete, consider three common challenges our clients share with us:

  1. We see the same kinds of people always apply for and get jobs in our organisation.
  2. Our organisation is unable to find new solutions that work in a market that is increasingly complex and ambiguous.
  3. Our organisation wants to be more agile, but some of our people are reluctant to change the way we do things.

Each of these challenges reveal different types of biases that can be hard to overcome. Let’s take a closer look into this:

  1. We see the same kinds of people always apply for and get jobs in our organisation.

We quite naturally warm to people who are similar to us. The Similarity Bias can be harmless in everyday life, but in recruitment it can have more serious consequences. I saw this for myself several years ago; I was interviewing with a colleague and when one of the candidates left the room I turned to my colleague and said, “I really like that candidate”. My colleague replied, “Of course you do, she’s just like you!”. I suddenly realised that if my colleague hadn’t been there, I would never have noticed this bias and how it was affecting my decision-making.

  1. Our organisation is unable to find new solutions that work in a market that is increasingly complex and ambiguous.

Information is king, but we tend to focus on information that we have to hand, and this can limit our ability to find new kinds of solutions. The Expedience Bias pushes us to make quick decisions and avoid too much deliberation. Above all it prevents us from spending time on finding out what we don’t know. What was it that prevented Kodak and Nokia from seeing the obvious technological changes happening around them?

  1. Our organisation wants to be more agile, but some of our people are reluctant to change the way we do things.

This is a very familiar challenge we hear from managers on our change management training programmes. The Experience Bias goes to the heart of why some organisations find it so hard to change; we simply over-estimate the relevance of past experience. The danger is that we can focus much more on the risks of change than the rewards.

What steps can we take to manage these biases?

Our unconscious thinking is responsible for 99% of the routine decisions we make. So clearly, engaging our conscious, reflective system is going to be a challenge. The trick is not to fight against bias; it’s a natural product of our brains. Instead, seek to understand what could be biasing our decisions and then makes changes to the way we do things in order to mitigate the biases. During training sessions this is where our clients begin to develop action plans. Here are some ideas our clients have had based on the three challenges above.

  1. Remove personal details from application forms, use standard interview templates and ensure recruitment panels have diverse members.
  2. Bring in diverse views from inside and outside the organisation by setting up employee discussion forums and finding out how customers’ needs are changing.
  3. Focus on the long-term benefits and reasons for change, address people’s fears, and ask – What will happen if we do nothing?

How to make changes that stick

The only way to remove biases is to acknowledge and accept them and then to do things differently. This is how to make the changes stick. But we still need to know whether what we have changed is working. We can measure the impact of changes by answering questions like:

  • What’s changed, or what’s different?
  • What impact has this had on the business?
  • Why did this work?

To summarise an approach that works:

  1. Analyse current challenges for underlying biases
  2. Mitigate biases by making changes to processes and approaches
  3. Measure the impact

Finally, here is a Reading List [https://www.amazon.de/hz/wishlist/ls/2F0M10AQKSIL6/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_4?_encoding=UTF8&type=wishlist] of the books our clients have found valuable in approaching this topic.

We hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you would like to know more about our experience of working with clients in this area, feel free to contact us.

9 Questions to Uncover Unconscious Bias

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When we first started doing training for our clients on unconscious bias and diversity we realised the main challenge of this topic was to create an environment where trainees can be open and honest and challenge themselves and others. We also realised that unconscious bias is not something you can ‘teach’ someone about; the only way to understand it is to experience it. So, in our training programmes we typically start with brain teasers to get trainees engaged and interested right away. The value of these brain teasers is the discussions that they lead to, where trainees can link the bias they have experienced in a simple quiz question to a real issue or example from their professional lives. The little ‘jolt’ they get from getting a simple question wrong can be a powerful way of nudging them to think differently about what they see and experience in the workplace, and lead to actions.

Try it for yourself. Here are nine questions that should get you thinking! Answers and commentary are at the end of the post.

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Q1

A father and son are in a car accident. The father dies and the son is rushed to hospital for surgery. The surgeon says: “I can’t operate on this boy, he’s my son”. How this is possible?

Q2

A bat and a ball cost EUR 1.10. The bat costs one Euro more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Q3

How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last 100 years?

  • More than doubled
  • Decreased by 50%
  • Remained the same

Q4

When recruiting a new role which job title attracted more female candidates?

  • Senior Engineer (m/f)
  • Senior Engineer (f/m)
  • Senior Engineer

Q5

What proportion of our thought processes are unconscious?

  • 99%
  • 85%
  • 75%

Q6

You need to choose between two final candidates in a job interview. Candidate A has 15 years’ experience in a similar role. Candidate B has only 5 years’ experience. Which candidate is more likely to succeed in the role?

Q7

Which statement is true?

  • Happy, successful people have fewer biases
  • You can reduce the biases your brain produces
  • We all have biases – it’s what makes us human

Q8

If a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man. Why is this?

Q9

Which sentence is more factual?

  • Gender diverse executive teams produce better results
  • High performing executive teams have more female executives

Answers and comments

  1. The surgeon is the boy’s mother. English is a ‘gender neutral’ language, which means we do not change words to show if they are male or female (as in French, German, Italian, etc.). However, many people still assume the job of ‘surgeon’ is inherently male and may struggle to get the right answer to this question. If job roles like ‘engineer’, ‘HR, ‘manager’ carry similar assumptions, this could influence how people are hired and promoted in organisations.
  2. 5 cents. If you answered 10 cents you were probably using intuition to answer. However, the obvious answer is not always the correct one. If we take a bit of time and use our reasoning rather than our quick-thinking intuition, the question is simple to answer. Many decisions in business are actually taken on intuition. Why do you think this is, and does it have any risks?
  3. Remained the same. In Hans Rosling’s 2018 book Factfullness [https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814] he describes how many people, even ‘experts’, get this question wrong because we are influenced by what the media shows us. A common bias is to make decisions based on a narrow selection of information (often what we have close to hand) instead of looking for other sources. If you are a decision-maker it is important to gather as many sources of information as possible and especially important to ask yourself, “What don’t I know?”
  4. Option (b). This experiment, recounted in Inclusion Nudges [https://www.amazon.com/Inclusion-Nudges-Guidebook-Unconscious-Organisations/dp/152363541X], suggests that we need to be very explicit if we want to recruit female candidates into roles that are very strongly perceived as male, even when not indicated as in option (c). In Germany it became law in 2019 to add ‘(m/f)’ to all job advertisements. This may look like a step forward. What do you think? In fact, there is no evidence that this leads to any changes in who applies.
  5. Neuroscientists estimate it is 99%. This makes it virtually impossible to prevent bias by just thinking ‘consciously’ because it means going against our nature. A more useful strategy is to make changes to processes and systems to ‘build out’ bias, e.g. changing the way we write job roles.
  6. We simply don’t know because past experience is no guarantee of future performance. Our over-reliance on past experience is a powerful bias. The only way to overcome it is to look for evidence-based data. For example, what is the correlation between previous experience and actual performance for everyone you have hired in the last 5 years?
  7. Bias is a natural part of our brain and is actually useful in many situations. The trick is to recognise when it is useful and when it is not, and develop decision-making habits that use the correct system [link to system 1 and 2 video].
  8. Isn’t this a shocking statistic? In her 2019 book Invisible Women [https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Women/dp/1784742929], Caroline Criado Perez explains how cars are designed by men and therefore they are built for men and men’s bodies. This powerful book uses data to show how women’s absence has lead to a world designed without women in mind. The book will help you to see many examples of this in the workplace that you may simply not have seen before, and perhaps make some changes!
  9. Only sentence (b) could be a fact. Sentence (a) takes two facts and assigns causality to them. The causality bias is very common and we do it all the time because it’s neat and quick. But beware when you see links between disparate facts. Always ask ‘why’ and ‘how’ before accepting cause and effect statements!

How to turn this into action?

Finally, here are 7 ideas for practical steps you can take in the workplace to mitigate bias. These ideas were generated by training groups which discussed some of the questions above.

  1. Try to ensure that interview panels have diverse individuals – think about different ages, genders, nationalities, job roles. Because bias is unconscious, you really need someone with a different perspective to point it out to you.
  2. Establish criteria for making important decisions e.g. at least 3 solutions to every problem, ensure you have counter-evidence for each solution, and seek other people’s input
  3. Replace resumes with a standard application form all candidates must complete. This ensures you get the same information on every candidate and you can limit the amount of personal information that could bias short-listers.
  4. Back up decisions with real data and evidence and challenge others to do the same; this can mitigate bias in decisions made with ‘gut instinct’.
  5. In performance reviews, don’t ask people to rate themselves. This could set up a bias in your mind and prevent you being objective.
  6. Ask different people chair meetings so that you get different perspectives on the table.
  7. Spend regular time getting to know remote team members as individuals, in order to remove the feeling of distance in virtual teams.

We hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you would like to know more about our experience of working with clients in this area, feel free to contact us.