Ayesha J. Whyte, JD, SPHR is Chief Human Resources Officer & employment attorney with expertise in employee engagement, inclusion & culture
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The goal of any business should be to hire the most qualified person for every job role. Regardless of a person’s age, race, gender, nationality or other protected class, every organization needs to implement recruitment practices that focus on each candidate’s job-relevant merits. This requires a careful screening and selection process that eliminates implicit bias, which in turn promotes greater diversity in hiring.
Recognizing implicit bias to create a more diverse hiring process is the key to business sustainability and innovation.
What is implicit bias?
Implicit bias is an unconscious attitude, belief or association that attributes certain characteristics or qualities to any group of people in society. It’s also sometimes referred to as stereotyping.
Anytime implicit bias is allowed to happen in an organization, it removes future growth and innovation. It is an issue that must be addressed with a plan put into place to prevent it from influencing business decisions like hiring and promotions.
Here is an example of implicit bias: A 2020 survey conducted by research scientists at New York University, the University of Denver and Harvard University interviewed men and women from 78 countries as well as American boys and girls aged 9-10 to understand hidden bias. The results were that men are stereotypically associated with being brilliant more often than women. However, when survey subjects were asked directly about this, they adamantly denied having this opinion.
Now, we know that this stereotype about men being smarter than women is not scientifically true. In fact, women and men are equally bright when it comes to most work-related tasks. However, there are still industries that typically hire more men than women because of these unconscious/implicit biases.
How does implicit bias impact organizations?
Bias, whether implicit or intentional, is crippling for businesses. Losing the benefits of bringing in talent with unique perspectives and ideas is damaging to any organization. It hinders the diverse thought partnership that only different perspectives can bring. The culture suffers as the organization gets the reputation of being rigid and unwelcoming to diversity and inclusion, and this signals to their current employees their views on equity.
If organizations do not take steps to become more self-aware of their hidden biases, they will continue to hire from a shallow talent pool, which will limit growth, profitability and innovation.
How can organizations move from implicit bias to create diverse hiring success?
Recruitment is a pivotal time when implicit bias can rear its ugly head. The opportunity to hire someone for a job they may be great at is eliminated when recruiters allow unconscious bias to influence their or a hiring manager’s decisions.
Tracie Stewart, professor of Psychology at Kennesaw State University, shares, “the effects of unconscious bias in the workplace actually start in interviews,” which sets the process up for failure. Stewart adds, “I have never found anyone who has no biases of any kind on the unconscious level, but fortunately there are ways to reduce, if not eradicate, implicit bias and its negative effects in our workplaces.” Acknowledging that implicit bias is ever-present is the first step toward improving hiring practices.
Creating diverse hiring practices can help eliminate bias. There are several ways that companies can lessen bias in hiring practices. One method is masking certain identifying information about candidates via the application system — leaving off names that can identify their gender, nationality and other characteristics, for example. This encourages recruiters to validate candidates based on career-relevant information.
Artificial intelligence tools can be used to screen candidate information and provide a more diverse short-list. These tools can also engage candidates to apply for new jobs they are qualified for, including them in the process for the future.
Ongoing training and awareness support more diversity in hiring as it becomes a critical value in the organization.
The Positive Impact Diversity Has On Organizationsiversity has been shown to benefit organizations in many ways. Here are just a few reasons why your organization should attempt to eliminate implicit bias in hiring and begin to develop diverse candidate pipelines.
It makes for better teams.
Research has found a clear connection between diversity and problem-solving in teams. When there are more diverse members of a team working together and drawing from their unique backgrounds, they can generate better solutions than even high-performance, more homogenous teams can achieve.
It boosts profitability.
In its latest report on diversity and inclusion, McKinsey research found, in 2019, that “companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile — up from 21 percent in 2017 and 15 percent in 2014.” In terms of leadership roles, ethnic and cultural resulted in top-quartile companies outperforming by 36% in profitability.
It increases innovation and creativity.
The more varied the backgrounds and experiences employees have, the better they are able to see things from multiple perspectives. New ideas are generated by those who embrace diversity and value the contributions of peers.
If you find your organization is suffering due to a homogenous culture, it may be a good time to take conscious steps toward designing a diversity strategy that starts with the talent you attract and acquire.
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