"Do Better" is a good mission statement, but "Practice What You Preach" is the workplace mantra we struggle with. Diversity and workplace inclusion initiatives have received plenty of flack over the past year due in large part to political agendas and misinformation. A recent study unfortunately demonstrates how entrenched employment discrimination is in parts of the U.S. labor market, and worse, the extent to which Black workers start behind in certain industries. And while race is the topic at hand, the reality is women face similar challenges in terms of biased decisions in the hiring process that affects wages and the economy of your community going forward.
The results of the study can be summed up this way. On average, employers contacted the presumed white applicants 9.5 percent more often than the presumed Black applicants. Keep this in mind...the practice varied significantly by firm and industry, and more importantly, some companies showed no difference in how they treated applications from people assumed to be white or Black. But what it does tell us is that racism is real, sexism is real, some are discriminating, but that we need to do better in our hiring practices.
Bias against Black names may sound like an overly strong statement, but studies have shown that discrimination against Black applicants had not changed in three decades. Latinos and Asians also face a certain level of discrimination, though somewhat less. And when it comes to male vs female applicants, certain industries favored men.
Having said all that, companies that had less discriminatory or biased approaches to hiring had something in common. They had centralized HR operations. Seriously, this is telling. There tended to be less bias when decisions came from a central office and, there tended to be more of it when they came from individual hiring managers. In other words, a more formal hiring process overcame implicit biases.
Why is this important? Recent studies have shown that a third of hiring managers won't hire Gen Z and older workers. If you add the bias that is continuing to happen at the hiring manager level, we not only have a major problem in terms of training hiring managers, companies are likely facing an even bigger problem with a diverse, multigenerational workforce.
We can and need to do better when it comes to hiring practices. For employers, this study among the many highlights the need to invest in training for managers and create onboarding programs that cater to different needs of an increasingly diverse and multigenerational workforce. Ageism, sexism, and racism...the list is long. But companies need to adapt to the changing workforce, not the other way around https://lnkd.in/gHsBzEMh #hiring #bias #discrimination #racism #sexism #ageism #jobs #humanresources #workforce #diversity #workplace #equity
President, MBM Elevate | CEO Group Chair, Vistage Worldwide | Executive Coach | Accelerating Organizational Impact
If you do not have an "HR Team", create the decision process like you do. Have a behavioral interview guide that matches the primary needs of the role and your team. Have a variety of folks do the interview and score against the structured questions. After that is compiled, then ask the team to apply their intuition/gut and see where that takes you!