What is Unconscious Bias and Why Does It Matter?

Have you ever walked into a boardroom and saw that most people at an executive level look, or act, in the same way?

You wouldn’t be the first.

In 2012, a study carried out by Yale University’s Psychiatry Department found that when a faculty board were presented with equally qualified male and female Ph.D. candidates, the male candidates were favoured more highly in the review process, resulting in a greater chance of them being hired over their female counterparts.

This is an example of unconscious bias, and despite the greater efforts for corporate race and gender equality, its effects are more commonly felt when hiring and promotion decisions are being made.

Another form of positive unconscious bias is the ‘halo effect’. This is where you would automatically assume a person has certain positive traits, without formerly engaging with them, due to pre-determined stereotypes regarding the way a person looks or converses.
For example, an employee who dresses more conservatively than his/ her counterparts are often seen as more capable in an office environment. A decision based solely on their outward appearance.

Unfortunately, a significant part of human behaviour and judgement is based on unconscious biases. Our brains process a ton of information on a daily basis from what we read, hear and experience and more often than not we use unconscious bias as a way to shortcut our decision making processes.

This can be largely detrimental for recruitment decisions in the workplace. If the majority of hires walk and talk the same way, once they are promoted to executive positions, they will naturally make the same unconscious hiring decisions. This results in a self-perpetuating cycle of the same groups in society being offered job opportunities, with no real change in a company’s culture.

So how can we overcome unconscious bias:

1. Name- blind recruitment: This is when an individual’s application form removes status identifying information such as name, race gender, and age before it’s shared with the recruitment body.
   This is widely carried out to remove racial discrimination and to promote diversity in the workforce
2. Hold company wide bias trainings: This helps managers focus more consciously on inclusivity and diversity and also helps them to identify instances where their biases would be exercised
3. Internally promote diverse individuals to more executive positions: Whether they are female or ethnic minority hires, promoting underrepresented and well-established employees, who have familiarised themselves with company culture, tackles the lack of representation at its root
4. An open- door feedback policy: Regularly ie once a month, send out a blind questionnaire so that you can gather honest feedback about the company’s efforts to foster a diverse and inclusive environment

An unconscious bias-free workplace is also one where imposter’s syndrome is less likely to be felt by its employees, resulting in a happier and more productive workplace.

Every employee, irrespective of gender, race or sexual orientation is respected, listened to and who’s cultural differences are celebrated rather than merely tolerated.