Hiring discrimination is a huge issue within the recruitment industry, and unfortunately most of the time discrimination happens without the hiring manager even realising it.
Why does this happen? It’s mostly as a result of unconscious bias.
Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organise social worlds by categorising.
Obviously, this is not what we want. So that leaves us with the question, how do we overcome it?
Giving everyone a fair shot is so important, no matter their race, colour, religion, age, sex or any other factor. Many organisations don’t realise that not only does this benefit prospective candidates and existing employees, but it’ll also work in their company’s favour too.
Diverse teams are able to make better decisions through having access to different perspectives and backgrounds. Your business will reap the benefits of a diverse cohort of workers, and your employees will have a safe and inclusive working environment.
When employees feel as though they can speak up, your team becomes higher performing and succeeds in innovation.
In a recent podcast episode, we had the opportunity to discuss this in detail with Tina Nielsen & Lisa Kepinski.
She told us, “what defines high performance teams and teams that are innovative, is where people feel like it is more safe to speak up and not self-silence”.
Understanding unconscious bias is only half the battle. And although there’s a lot of information available on the topic of diversity and inclusion, there still seems to be some confusion surrounding the complexity of it.
After speaking with Dr Kathleen Hamblin in another podcast episode, our listeners were able to get her perspective on how D&I has been underestimated and that it’s not as simple as completing an ‘unconscious bias program’ as a tick-box exercise.
She explains that it’s a whole lot more than that, and the severity of the situation needs to be understood so real change can really take place within the recruitment industry.
She said, “I’ve done programs on unconscious bias, and it can be useful or interesting for sort of increasing people’s understanding or awareness of what this issue is – when in terms of an actual impact on people’s behaviour or changing anything in the workplace, you’re not likely to get that outcome from a two-hour workshop about what is unconscious bias. It’s a feel-good, funny, “ha-ha that’s interesting” and people go out thinking, “Okay, now I’ve done that, I get it”. And you don’t get it. It’s much more complex than that. So, underestimating the complexity of this issue.”
How are you going to minimise unconscious bias and hiring discrimination in your hiring process?
First off, you need to put strategies in place to make sure you’re not setting yourself up for failure. Unconscious bias isn’t something that can be eradicated completely. As humans, we’re sometimes incapable of recognising our biases and that makes it hard to eliminate their impact. In fact, 60% of interviewers make up their mind about a candidate within 15 minutes of meeting them.
However, having specific strategies will make sure you’re doing everything you can to reduce it. A good place to start would be to review the initial impressions you have when you first meet a candidate.
For example, have you judged them more favorably because they’ve got the same degree as you? Have you assumed that they’re not right for the job because they look older than the rest of the team? By asking yourself these questions, you’ll be able to figure out exactly what you need to put into place in terms of hiring processes.
Some general strategies to put in place could be as simple as rewording your job descriptions to make sure they don’t contain particularly gendered language, or other words associated with biases.
Introducing tests as a first step in your recruitment process could also be beneficial as they provide a quick and easy way to evaluate the skill sets of candidates without revealing any identifying information.
‘Blind’ hiring is also a tried and tested process that can help reduce the amount of biases present in the hiring process via removal of certain candidate information that may result in discrimination.
Conclusion
Everyone will have inherent biases that are difficult to prevent entirely, but there definitely are ways to minimise unconscious bias within your hiring process.
Taking a look at your hiring data will quickly let you know if there are any patterns in how you recruit for job roles. For example, if you’re hiring more of a certain group compared to nothing at all for another group, you’ll have a place to start.
Making sure you increase diversity within your organisation is much more than just a two hour workshop on unconscious bias, it requires a systematic change in the way you approach recruitment as a whole.
Introducing specific hiring strategies is one way to do this, as well as proper education for your entire workforce.
If you’d like to listen to more diversity and inclusion content, click here to listen to our podcast Inclusion for Change.
If you’re serious about change, speak to us about our leadership and coaching service. This program will help you successfully transform internal culture, allowing your leaders and their teams to be their best selves and achieve peak performance.
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