HR’s Next Step To Successful DEI: Addressing Unconscious Bias

2 steps to consider

For most companies, the HR team is the gatekeeper to promoting workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion. It all starts with the hiring process: Recruit diverse candidates, conduct unbiased interviews, hire the most qualified person. However, ensuring success and inclusion once someone is hired often proves to be the greater challenge.

Although much progress has been made (and, of course, there is still a long way to go), many organizations find themselves in a “one step forward, two steps back” reality. If diverse hires don’t feel welcomed, valued, and empowered, all the work that went into bringing them into the company could be wasted. They might not feel comfortable contributing their unique experiences. They might not get opportunities to advance. They might leave the organization out of frustration.
 

Unconscious bias is often a leading obstacle in translating the diversity in hiring to inclusion in everyday operations. If two employees with practically identical credentials and experience are up for the same promotion, unconscious bias may determine who gets it (e.g., the promotion may go to the person who’s white, or male, or younger, or taller, or not overweight, or most like the person making the decision). At this point, it’s not about who gets in the door, but who thrives.

One of HR’s missions is to shape an environment that enables employees to feel safe, productive, and valued. Because of this, HR must work to navigate and overcome unconscious bias and help ensure that every hire has the opportunity to be successful, to support coworkers and customers, and to strengthen the organization.

The stakes are high, not only for an organization’s reputation and culture, but also for the bottom line. Research consistently shows that inclusive companies are more innovative, more productive, and more profitable. When HR departments make a greater effort in addressing unconscious bias, they foster inclusion to complement diversity. That benefits everyone in the organization, from the C-suite to frontline employees to customers.

People bring their own experiences, reactions, beliefs, and, yes, biases to everything they do. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it can be a survival mechanism that helps humans survive and thrive. If you’re bitten by an unfamiliar dog, you likely will be more careful around the next dog you encounter. Such behaviors become innate, and we apply them to our actions and interactions.

Unconscious bias, also known as implicit bias, inevitably affects the workplace without people realizing they are making judgments about others. For example, employees may believe some coworkers are more reliable than others not because of a deeply held ideology or any observable proof, but rather, because they are more accustomed to working alongside a certain demographic than others. Blatant prejudices still exist in the workplace, but unconscious biases can be more insidious because they aren’t obvious—particularly to the person exhibiting the bias.

As another example of unconscious bias, consider this scenario: The Covid-19 pandemic drove millions of Americans to home offices and video teleconferences. Working from home is now a challenge to many parents whose children are also home. When a child wanders into a Zoom call, unconscious bias could invoke positive or negative reactions from coworkers. Some might be happy to see the child. Others might question the parents' commitment to their work or their ability to balance working and taking care of their child. Such a belief may not be spoken aloud, but it may be subtly felt by the employees on the call.

Another way that unconscious bias impacts the workplace is through microaggressions. Microaggressions are commonplace comments or behaviors that are not intended to be biased or offensive but are still harmful—especially when someone experiences them regularly. Some common examples are saying, "I don't see color," or telling an international coworker, "You speak English so well." Microaggressions can hurt an organization's morale and make employees feel isolated or excluded.

Conversations about unconscious bias are difficult. Few people openly admit their conscious biases, much less their implicit ones. Moreover, most people want to be kind and fair, and it can be challenging to acknowledge the possibility that we may be unknowingly denying opportunities to others.

Nevertheless, HR professionals can be instrumental in addressing unconscious bias and effecting real change. These two steps can start the process:

HR shouldn’t be content with simply making a hire, particularly a diverse hire. Employee growth is just as crucial as recruitment, interviewing, and onboarding, if not more so.

A system that tracks attrition, advancement, employee satisfaction, policy violations, incidents, behavioral data, and other organization-specific trends can identify whether or not people are thriving, as well as what might be holding them back. Charting only the overall turnover rate doesn’t reveal enough. Rather, breaking turnover rate down by demographic delivers the data necessary to see if unconscious bias might be at play. By actively following employees’ journeys, HR extends the initiative taken to hire those employees in the first place.

Managers are key to the success—or lack thereof—of the employees they oversee. However, even the most progressive, employee-friendly managers may make decisions based on unconscious biases that hold their team members back. Recognizing and understanding bias offers a way to escape the preconceptions that managers don’t realize they’re bringing to their leadership. Therefore, bias training for managers should become part of HR’s leadership curriculum. 

Furthermore, pushing strong, behavior-focused training into the employee population is necessary to ensure change across the organization. Good training challenges participants to consider bias from multiple angles. It also helps employees recognize and challenge their own biases in a safe environment. 

One way to achieve this goal is through visualization exercises. For example, imagine you're waiting in line for coffee, and the couple in front of you is taking a long time to order. After employees visualize this scene, ask them to examine it. What race is the couple you visualized? What gender are they? Are they old or young? Not all employees have the same unconscious biases; open-ended visualization exercises can yield more personalized learning experiences, which will help the training resonate better.

The goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate all unconscious bias, but to recognize when and how bias occurs and how it might be influencing decisions. 

When thinking through must-haves for effective unconscious bias training, ask yourself:
 

These strategies shouldn’t just be feel-good actions that companies take to say they are addressing diversity. HR needs these approaches to be requirements that maximize talent development. In 2021 and beyond, simply saying “we are going to be bias-free” won’t cut it. If your organization hopes to stay commercially competitive, and you want to attract top talent and retain it, your employees and your company must get past their unconscious biases.