Foster an Inclusive Culture by Taking the Time to Recognize Your Unconscious Biases

Fostering an inclusive and diverse culture in your organization is about much more than hiring practices. People can take steps to support diversity and inclusion every day in their interactions with colleagues. One of the best ways to do that is to become more aware of your unconscious biases and take steps to mitigate them. No one is immune from having biases, and often they do not arise from any ill intent. As a result, we made a commitment to having all employees participate in unconscious bias training at OppenheimerFunds.

The Nobel-prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman, most widely known as the author of the best-selling book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” did seminal work identifying many of these biases and the reasons we form them. As Dr. Kahneman explains, our brain really has two operating systems. System 1 enables us to do things, like drive our cars, almost on automatic pilot, without much conscious thinking required. System 2 works when we must be fully present and alert, making every decision about what to do or say next.

The problem is that System 1, our unconscious brain, often operates with assumptions that prove to be false. This stems from the fact that our brain must quickly organize and classify the millions of impressions we are hit with every day. But the leaps we take may not hold up under more careful consideration. Some of the errors in perception that our unconscious brain can make include:

• Similar-to-me bias – When we put greater stock in the thoughts and opinions of people who feel familiar to us because they’re of the same cultural background or same gender or have a similar personality.
• Confirmation bias – When we attach greater significance to evidence that proves one of our existing opinions.
• Recency bias – When we allow ourselves to be overly influenced by our most recent experience.
• Systemic bias – When we don’t pay enough attention to an embedded system or process that immediately puts certain groups of people at a disadvantage.

Strategies for Keeping an Open Mind

Even when the impact of our biases is brought to our attention, it can be easy to insist we aren’t falling prey to them. Orchestra leaders, for example, may believe they are simply hiring the best musicians, without any gender bias. But what happens if their decisions are put to the test? In a famous case from the early 1950s, the Boston Symphony Orchestra decided to have auditioning musicians play behind a curtain and also enter the stage on a carpet. (In a first round of the test, the gender bias had crept in, even with the curtain, because the judges could tell the difference in the sounds heels vs. men’s flat-soled shoes made on a stage’s wooden floors.) When the tests were fully blind, 50% of the women candidates advanced to the next stage of the auditions – a far higher rate of women than had ever been passed through before. These findings have clear implications for hiring managers.

When interviewing candidates for your organization, start by identifying the professional qualifications of the ideal candidate. Take a look at your broader team and give some thought to what skill sets are missing, who you currently have on the team, and what kind of candidate would be able to provide diverse perspectives and complement your existing team. A second bias-mitigation strategy is to consider who should be part of the interview process, taking time to ensure that the interviewers bring a mixture of perspective and experience. A third strategy is to make a list, before reviewing someone’s resume, of all the assumptions you would make based on things like the town they live in, the college they went to, and how long they stayed in past jobs. Simply by writing out your assumptions, you can begin to shift your brain from System 1 to System 2. That shift can enable you to screen the candidate with a more objective and open mind. In a subsequent interview with the candidate, you will be more likely to uncover information and gain insights that demonstrate why the candidate would be a good fit. Overall, your hiring process will likely lead to better results when you make this effort to acknowledge and mitigate biases and involve multiple interviewers, who each bring their unique perspective.

At first impression, people often think diversity and inclusion is about creating a more accepting environment for people of different ethnic backgrounds, gender, and gender identity/sexual orientation. Inclusiveness is about much more than just accepting the differences. It is about making sure that all employees feel welcome and are invited to be part of the dialogue, have access to opportunities for growth and development, and feel comfortable bringing their “whole self to work.”

At our firm, we know these changes can be difficult to implement on your own. It’s why we have offered unconscious bias training to every employee.

This training does much more than enhance our culture. It also helps us perform better as a business. The research shows that diverse teams that are managed well tend to generate better results because of the diverse perspectives they bring and their ability to challenge each other’s thinking. As a result, they also tend to develop more innovative solutions. One of the reasons for a diverse group’s success may be that working alongside people who don’t mirror us forces us out of our System 1 patterns of thinking and requires us to be more conscious and alert about the choices and decisions being made.

Our staff’s response to the unconscious bias training has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s rewarding for everyone to discover how having a more open mind and a more receptive interaction with colleagues can positively affect business outcomes over time.

These views represent the opinions of OppenheimerFunds, Inc. and are not intended as investment advice or to predict or depict the performance of any investment. These views are as of the publication date and are subject to change on the basis of subsequent developments.