Unconscious Bias - from awareness to action

In this article, you’ll find everything you need to understand about what unconscious bias is, how it affects you, strategies, and tactics for overcoming your biases.

Many consider the unconscious bias to be a new brand for diversity & inclusion training, for example rather than focusing on discrimination based on gender, race, religion, disability, age or sexual orientation, why don’t we consider eliminating the root cause i.e. unconscious bias?

Unconscious bias is when we make judgments or decisions on the basis of our prior experience, our own personal deep-seated thought patterns, assumptions, or interpretations, and we are not aware that we are doing it.

Making decisions about candidates is hard work and depends on one's ability to judge them entirely on their merits. Each and every one of us tends to believe that we are fairer, and less prejudiced than the average person. Research has shown that this is an effect of self-serving attribution bias, one of the many unconscious biases that we draw on in order to make fast decisions.

Importantly, we have both a positive bias towards our ingroup and a negative bias towards an outgroup. We are familiar with members of our ingroup and feel on firm ground when judging their excellence and trustworthiness. We perceive a pleasant fluency of action when we experience familiarity, and this makes us feel confident and in control of our decisions. With unfamiliar members of other groups, we are on less sure ground.

For example, orchestras used to be all-male, but this is no longer the case. A study of auditions showed that if candidates were invisible to the appointment panel, performing behind a screen, the panel was enabled to decide on merit only, and this resulted in women being selected equally.

How do we develop an unconscious bias

You’re not born with a bias, you learn it through socialization. But they become embedded in our neural pathways through experiences and the patterns we see. We don’t generally think about patterns, but patterns in society might develop as early as primary education. These patterns can be observed in our daily perception of occupations. One such example is some of us perceiving primary teachers to be female, whereas financial executives tend to be male.

In addition, some people might think that the drivers for black cabs in London are male and white, whereas private cabs, like Uber drivers, tend to be male but non-white. These are just some examples of patterns that are going on, but we generally don’t notice them.

Impact of unconscious bias at the workplace

When unconscious bias comes into play, our decisions may not be as robust and objective as we believe them to be. Therefore irrational, bias-based decisions and behaviors are not good for business.

According to Deloitte's 2019 state of inclusion survey 64 percent of workers surveyed “felt they had experienced bias in their workplaces during the last year and of those, 61 percent felt they experienced bias in the workplace at least once a month.”

Unconscious bias has a substantial and far-reaching impact on work environment and culture, on daily interactions between colleagues around the office, and on client relationships. It can seep into any situation where individuals have the power to influence outcomes through their behavior, decisions, and subsequent actions. Unconscious bias has potentially negative implications on recruitment processes, staff development, performance appraisals, workforce retention, leadership, and customer service – and consequently for bottom-line business performance and organization reputation.

Unconscious bias might determine whether or not:

• The best candidate gets a job.
• Which colleague is allocated responsibility for an important project.
• Promotions are given on merit or favoritism.
• Allegations of discrimination are upheld in the tribunal.

The consequences of ignoring the dangers of unconscious bias can have a detrimental effect, not just on the culture of the company but also on the reputation of an organization.

In 2013, banking firm Oppenheimer Europe was taken to an employment tribunal after employee Isabel Sitz, 42 claimed she was forced out of her job due to the culture of racism and sexism in the company. The basis of the accusations was a sudden cut to her salary from ￡95,000 per annum to ￡15,000, as well as a long list of examples where the company frequently expressed a chauvinistic culture. As a result, the company was ordered to pay Miss Sitz a significant amount for lost earnings and injury to feelings, not to mention the significant damage it inflicted on the company’s reputation in such a high profile case. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• Do I typically go to the same people for lead projects or other assignments?
• Do I create opportunities for others to demonstrate their capabilities and potential?
• Whom do I include in important meetings and events?
• How do I identify and choose candidates for promotion and succession?

 Unconscious bias in hiring

Unconscious Bias can play a huge role in hiring. Even if our mind frames a bias positively, it can still lead to unfair favoring. For example, if you prefer a candidate who went to a certain University because you associate it with intelligence, it is still a harmful unconscious bias, because that creates a halo effect. A halo effect is one where one positive trait can affect our overall perception of a person. A background of higher education does not automatically mean they are more intelligent than other candidates.

First impressions and gut feelings count for so much during interviews. But preventing unconscious bias is vital, as it can lead to unfair, inaccurate judgments, overlooked talent, or at worst, discrimination. You might have subconscious or stereotypical views of what a successful person looks like, which can affect how you compare and contrast different candidates rather than assessing each on their own individual merit.

Questions to ask yourself when hiring:

• Do I typically hire similar types of people or people who are like me?
• What do I mean when I say a candidate is not the right fit?
• What do I do if my candidate pool is not sufficiently diverse?
• What can I learn about my past hiring choices, both successful and unsuccessful?

Facebook & Google

In August 2015, Facebook announced that it would be releasing its “managing unconscious bias” internal training program to the public, with the aim of helping employees recognize unconscious prejudices to improve better relations in the workplace and mitigate the impact of unconscious bias. “managing bias is an essential part of building diverse and high- performing organizations,” chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the release, echoing the outline we published in our introduction to unconscious bias. Facebook’s announcements follow in the footsteps of Google, who have their own unconscious bias training program, called “unconscious bias at work”. 

Managing unconscious bias

In the workplace, unconscious biases can mean that we sometimes treat a specific group or individual based on a set of assumptions that we perhaps don’t fully appreciate that we hold.

However this is not a behavior that could be described as rational, and it is only by recognizing these biases within ourselves that we can start to tackle and ultimately remove them. If we don’t show each and every member of a team an equal amount of warmth and acceptance, over time this failure to interact with everybody on an equal basis can impact an organization quite negatively - staff can begin to feel alienated, and a whole host of problems can begin to unfold.

It’s therefore imperative that you begin to put in place some initiatives to start the process of overcoming unconscious bias throughout your company, and with the proper training, this can be done quite readily.

I’ve put together 3 tactics for overcoming unconscious bias in the workplace.

Unconscious bias training

The effects of unconscious bias are so subtle as to be barely noticeable and this results in what’s known as micro-behaviors, which - although they are barely perceptible - remain. These might be just a lack of warmth in a greeting, or a failure to interact with people that we’re biased towards. whilst these behaviors might not seem like much, in the long-term they can be very damaging.

In an attempt to change this behavior, it’s necessary to look at the following:

• What impact it could have on the organization
• How training can address it
• How work practices, processes, and policies might affect such behavior

By implementing an unconscious bias training course, it’s possible for employers to break the habit of bias through education.

Training can teach workers that whilst their behavior isn't really their fault (thus doing away with the blame game), they can be taught how to be aware of their behavior so that they can make better decisions based on knowledge rather than emotions.

Unconscious bias training is ideal for employees at every level and especially useful for those in Hr, as well as managers and those that often deal with employees that are on a different level than themselves. However, that’s not to say that it’s unsuitable for more junior members of staff, it really is useful for all workers to help them understand more about themselves and how biases affect their interaction with colleagues, customers, and management. A course can help people to recognize the biases that they are predisposed to when they take place.

Use counter-stereotyping and de-biasing activities

It’s important to start making associations that are contrary to existing stereotypes. For example, think about incorporating media that features male nurses, elderly athletes, female bus drivers, etc. The idea is to challenge participants’ expectations, and therefore shed light on their own biases, whilst at the same time challenging them.

Use Simulation

Participants can often benefit by being submerged in a simulated environment – as a new employee amongst a group of others, for instance. The simulation can involve the micro-gestures or lack of eye contact that is often associated with our unconscious biases. Other simulations can include conducting interviews, reviewing appraisals, and dealing with customers. Putting the participant in the shoes of the recipient of prejudice can help enlighten them towards their own behaviors and how damaging even the subtlest of gestures may be.

In my opinion, identifying and managing unconscious bias plays a pivotal role in organizations as it impacts your business in areas such as recruitment, work allocation, performance management, and customer relations. Many organizations have already developed courses to address unconscious bias. How is your organization combatting unconscious bias?

Mohsin Ahmad Bhatti is a Management Consultant and trainer on Unconscious Bias. Over the years he has developed many branded training products that can be customized to meet specific requirements of organizations across the private & social sectors of different countries & cultures. He received a BSc Hons degree in Business Studies from the University of Wales, International Diploma and International Advanced Diploma in Business Management from Oxford House College, UK.