Unconscious bias, no matter how challenging to admit, is embedded deeply in human attitudes, influencing their viewpoints, judgments, and actions based on certain social stereotypes or beliefs about any group of people without conscious awareness. Aka implicit bias, such conscious bias is a very common scenario in the workplace which can have a severe impact when it comes to setting up a fair and inclusive workplace. According to Charles Spinelli, it is the key responsibility of the HR department to address such biases by pursuing certain strategies that welcome diversity to make to workplace environment bias-free, healthy, and thriving. Here are some proven HR strategies to deal with unconscious bias in the workplace:
- Carrying out Bias Training Sessions: one of the productive approaches to tackle unconscious bias among employees is to conduct regular unconscious bias training sessions. These programs focus on developing awareness of various types of biases and how they unconsciously impact judgments and decision-making processes. Spinelli considers that HR people are also humans, so it makes sense to collaborate with experts with specialization in diversity and inclusion to design workshops aiming to make it interactive and tailored to specific biases widespread in an organization.
- Reviewing and Altering Recruitment Processes: The HR team should take serious steps to evaluate their hiring strategies to figure out where unconscious biases might be influencing their decisions. Executing structured interviews, in which all candidates are asked similar kinds of questions can be helpful to lessen subjective judgments. In addition, anonymizing resumes or automating the initial screening phase can be helpful to prevent unconscious bias on consideration of candidates’ religion, national origin, gender, or background.
- Welcoming Diversity in Leadership: Perspectives of leaders typically work behind shaping an organizational culture. HR should work actively to embrace diversity, especially at the senior management level who are key decision-makers. Adopting policies that inspire candidates with diverse backgrounds to apply for leadership positions and welcoming them into the establishment ensures transparency in employment decision-making like hiring, promotion, benefits, dismissal and thereby help alleviate biases rather than favoring specific demographic groups.
- Establishing Transparent Performance Evaluation: Biases often impact the process of performance appraisal, affecting not only the progression of career but also employee morale and thereby overall business performance. According to Charles Spinelli, to deal with such common workplace issues HR needs to develop well-defined, objective performance metrics by working together with experts. This helps them formulate training programs to train managers on the method of assessing employee performance fairly based on certain metrics. Regular reviewing of these sessions among managers can come of immense help to ensure fairness and consistency in evaluations.
- Encouraging Open Conversion and Feedback: Promoting a workplace culture where employees do not hesitate or feel comfortable to communicate bias-related concerns without fearing being retaliated against is a great way to deal with biases in the first place. According to Charles Spinelli, it is prudent to promote open dialogues supported by anonymous feedback mechanisms or a focus group approach. Bringing transparency in conversations on bias can aid in raising awareness and prompt the management to address the issues proactively.
- Regular Evaluation: It is a vital step for HR and also the management team to sit together and monitor the success of their different initiatives via data-driven approaches. Gathering and studying demographic data, and surveys of employee satisfaction and performance rates can get insight into whether or where still biases could exist.Â
Last but not least, bringing external perspectives is a crucial step as it helps provide insightful views and approaches to get rid of unconscious bias. So, make sure to work with diversity consultants specialized in unconscious bias training who can tailor strategies matching to organizational needs.
