By Tim Newnham - HR.com
This article is part of a 3-piece series titled “Moving Business Beyond Bias” focused on how SAP SuccessFactors is using technology to create equity in the workplace. The series covers the state of equity in the workplace, how HR is positioned to provide the next big competitive advantage, and how you can use technology to rid bias from people-based decisions. In this third piece, we delve into how technology can be used to change how people decisions are made in a new normal of equitable practices.
The first article covering the state of equity in the workplace can be found here and the second article on the pivotal role of HR can be found here.
Get Modern Tools to Detect, Prevent, and Eradicate Unconscious Bias from Decision Making
In order to have real impact, there is a real need to put tools and technology into the hands of decision-makers, enabling them to attract, engage, and retain the key talent they most need in a changing labor pool. Organizations are not moving beyond bias on their own. But with the right tools, they can ensure that the decisions being made around talent are free of bias and supporting their organization’s success.
Focus on your recruiting efforts
Because recruiting methods, messages, and images can sometimes inadvertently convey an exclusive culture,
- Design and deploy the career site builder tool to support a diverse and inclusive message to potential candidates.
- Utilize recruitment sourcing reports to understand where you could find a more diverse range of qualified applicants.
- Use interview guides to help ensure consistent, job-related protocols.
- Draw on tools that help you form a panel of interviewers, which can reduce individual bias.
Continually improve how people are managed
Because unconscious manager bias can sometimes influence the way employees are managed and evaluated,
- Writing assistant tools can help to guide performance feedback that is equitable and actionable, regardless of employee demographic characteristics.
- Use the continuous performance management tools to promote more-frequent, job-related feedback based on accomplishments.
Train and develop your people
Train managers to work beyond unconscious bias with online learning courses
- While broadly delivered diversity training has been shown to be ineffective in changing attitudes and behaviors long term, training for the people making decisions about talent in your organization is critical. This training should not just drive awareness of the value of diversity, but should also equip decision-makers with tools and methods for making accurate, unbiased decisions about talent. Consider as an example the hiring manager conducting a job interview. This hiring manager should receive training on how to accurately determine skill, capability, potential, and fit from a job candidate’s interview responses—driving good decision making, regardless of the candidate’s demographic characteristics. Another example would be a supervisor administering a performance evaluation. Without proper training on how to turn observations into accurate, evaluative data around someone’s performance, the supervisor is more likely to fall back on “gut feel” and bias and perpetuate disparities among different groups of employees.
- Because mentoring is a career-building process that is not always equitably accessible to everyone, help ensure mentoring is available to everyone and matching is unbiased using mentoring programs that focus on skills and competencies to promote the best matches.
Compensate and reward
- Highlight team compensation-ratio overviews and allow increases based on absolute values, reducing the impact of pay inequities.
Take the bias out of promotions
- Prevent bias before it happens by enabling photoless calibration capabilities.
- Highlight possible bias by visualizing gender diversity to see how different genders have been rated.
Cultivate social collaboration
- Supportive, strong, and meaningful relationships in the workplace are critical components of workforce engagement. Companies that actively pursue inclusive practices support and provide the means for social collaboration based on common ground characteristics and interests. These types of groups are often represented by the typical diversity data points such as women’s networks, LGBTQ groups, and veteran communities, as examples. However, networks related to common areas of interest such as philanthropic topics or new innovations, or to job functions such as marketing or development, are also social mechanisms to create a sense of belonging and engagement. Leaders support these binding relations through the use the social collaboration platforms to promote cross-organizational social collaboration and enable members of the workforce from diverse backgrounds to contribute.
Measure and track your progress
- Use workforce analytics to establish comprehensive diversity metrics and analyze progress using the investigate tool.
A general conclusion
What we’ve been doing isn’t working. A new solution requires a new approach, and HR is at the forefront and you can make a positive difference in this.
