Do
you ever find yourself having reactions you're not proud of like the following:
Do you automatically laugh at an
offensive joke? Do you think, "That overweight person shouldn't be eating
that giant dessert?" Do you increase your walking speed when you move
past a young male of a different race at night? Do you treat male and
female children differently?
Some people are explicitly racist, sexist,
or classist, and aren’t concerned about that biased attitude. Unconscious bias is
the underlying attitude and stereotype that people unconsciously attribute
to another person (or group of people) that affect how they understand and
engage with life. These are the concealed stereotypes that are
held, but a person is not aware of. Your explicit belief might be that everyone
is equal, but you may find yourself reacting differently from that.
Buried prejudice and unconscious biases influence our
feelings, decisions, and behavior in shocking habits. Recognizing and overcoming these unconscious
biases can be challenging, but is an important process when trying to be a
tolerant, open-minded person. Start by labeling and realistically confronting
the unconscious biases you have. Once you’ve done that, you can work to change what
needs changing to your goal of conquering bigotry.
If you’re hiring based on your intuition, you may be hiring on the basis of unconscious bias. The best way to prevent from succumbing to unconscious biases is to become aware of them, and take action to prevent them when recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees. Doing so will help your team build a more diverse and inclusive workplace.
To help, we’ve identified twelve examples of unconscious biases that commonly affect employees in the workplace. Below are also hints to avoid these unconscious biases when hiring (and keeping) the best employees available:
Affinity Bias is the tendency people have to connect with
others who share similar interests, experiences, and backgrounds. When
companies hire for ‘culture fit,’ they are likely falling
prey to affinity bias. When hiring teams meet someone they like and who
they know will get along with the team, it’s more often than not because that
person shares similar interest, experiences and a background, which is not
helping your team, grow and diversify.
While
similarities shouldn’t automatically disqualify a candidate, they should never
be the deciding factor, either. Actively take note of the similarities you
share with the candidate so that you can differentiate
between attributes that may cloud your judgment and the skills,
experiences, and unique qualities that would contribute to your team as a
‘culture add’ rather than ‘culture fit.’
Ageism in
the workplace is the tendency to have negative feelings about another person
based on their age. Especially at American companies, ageism affects older
people more often than younger people. 58%
of workers start noticing ageism when they enter their 50s. At that
point, it can be more difficult to change careers, find a job or move up in
their careers because employers tend to value younger talent more and
more — even though experience and expertise are critical skills
for any successful business.
Train your team members to understand the issue of ageism and
expose some of the myths about workers of different ages. Your company should
create a policy that prevents age bias along with hiring goals to keep age
diversity top of mind when recruiting new talent.
Attribution Bias is an occurrence where you try to make
sense of or judge a person’s behavior based on prior observations and
interactions you’ve had with that individual that make up your perception of
them. While this may seem harmless, humans are quick to judge and falsely
assume things about a person without knowing their full story.
When
hiring, attribution bias can cause hiring managers and recruiters to determine
a candidate unfit for the job because of something unusual on their resume or
unexpected behavior during the interview. Rather than assume a candidate
is unfit for a job because they were late to the interview, ask them what
happened — it could be totally innocent and unprecedented. If there is
something on their resume or something they said during the interview that
caused you to draw conclusions about the candidate, ask them further clarifying
questions. Don’t forget that interviewees are often nervous and may misspeak or
stumble. Give them a chance to share their full story with you before you
judge.
Beauty Bias is
a social behavior where people believe that attractive people are more
successful, competent and qualified. While appearances (race aside) are
not protected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is a form of
bias that is prominent in the workplace. One study found that traditionally attractive people, both
men and women, earn higher incomes, whereas less attractive people
earn lower incomes.
Another study found that attractive people are less likely to
receive a job offer for roles that are low-paying or perceived to be beneath
them. That may be because attractive people are viewed as more social, happy and successful. To avoid beauty
bias, companies should create structured recruiting and interview processes so
that your team will be able to compare applications and interviews equally and
reduce the risk of bias. Having an initial phone screening rather than a video
call or in-person interview can also help as well as utilizing unbiased
technology to identify top candidates.
Confirmation Bias is the preference to draw conclusions
about a situation or person based on your personal desires, beliefs and
prejudices rather than on unbiased merit. In hiring, confirmation bias
often plays a detrimental role at the very beginning of the process when you
first review a resume and form an initial opinion of the candidate based on
inconsequential attributes like their name, where they’re from, where they went
to school, and so forth.
This
opinion can follow you into the interview process and consequently steer
questions to confirm the initial opinion of the candidate. While every
interview will lend itself to a unique conversation based on the individual's
background, it’s important to ask standardized, skills-based questions that
provide each candidate with a fair chance to stand out. This will help
prevent your team from asking too many off-the-cuff questions that may lead to
confirmation bias.
Conformity Bias is the tendency people have to act similar to
the people around them regardless of their own personal beliefs or
idiosyncrasies — also known as peer pressure. When your hiring team
gets together to review a candidate’s application materials and conduct the
interview, conformity bias can cause individuals to sway their opinion of a
candidate to match the opinion of the majority.
The
problem is the majority is not always right, which may cause your
team to miss out on an excellent candidate because individual opinions become
muddled in a group setting. Before you get your hiring team together to review
a candidate, have them all write down and submit their individual
opinions separate from one another immediately after the interview
ends. Then have your team come together and review what everyone wrote down so
you can hear their impartial opinions.
Gender Bias is the tendency to prefer one gender over
another gender. It’s no surprise that men are all-too-often given
preferential treatment over women in the workplace. Both men and women prefer
male job candidates. A man is 1.5 xs more likely to be hired than a woman. Conduct blind
screenings of applications that exclude aspects of a candidate that may reveal
their assumed gender, like name, and interests. Set diversity hiring goals to
ensure your company holds itself accountable to equitable hiring practices. And
again, make sure to compare candidates based on skill and merit rather than
traits that can cloud your judgment of them.
Height Bias is the tendency to judge a person who is
significantly shorter or taller than the socially-accepted human height. One
study found that
a person who is six feet tall earns roughly $5,500 more per year than someone
who is five and a half feet tall regardless of gender, age or weight.
Another study found that tall candidates are perceived as more
competent, employable, and healthy, which may explain why 58% of male upper management at major companies
is over six feet tall. Conducting blind interviews, phone interviews or video
interviews will reduce your susceptibility to judge a person based on their
height. Also simply knowing that this bias is a common social behavior will help
you identify your bias against candidates.
Name Bias is
the tendency people have to judge and prefer people with certain types of names
— typically names that are of Anglo origin. This is one of the most
pervasive examples of unconscious bias in the hiring process, and the numbers
bear it out. One
study found that white names receive 50% more callbacks for interviews
than African American names. Additionally, applicants living in nicer
neighborhoods also receive more callbacks for both white and African
American names.
Another study found that Asian last names are
28% less likely to receive a callback for an interview compared to Anglo last
names. This one is simple. Omit the candidate’s name and personal information
- like email, phone number and address - from their application materials.
You can either do this by assigning candidates a number or have an unbiased
third-party team member omit this information for the hiring team until they
bring a candidate in to interview. This will ensure that hiring teams are
selecting candidates based on their skills and experiences without the
influence of irrelevant personal information.
The Contrast Effect is when you compare two or more things
that you have come into contact with — either simultaneously or
one-after-another — causing you to exaggerate the performance of one in contrast
to the other. It’s one of the most common types of bias in the recruiting
industry. When you’re reviewing loads of candidates, it can be easy to compare
one application to the next in the stack and determine which one is better
from the other.
An
exceptionally good interview with one candidate may make the next one seem
terrible. Create a structured applicant review and interview process
so that your team will be able to compare applications and interview answers as
apples-to-apples rather than apples-to-pears. This also goes for performance
reviews and rewards for individual employees.
The Halo Effect is the tendency people have to place another
person on a pedestal after learning something impressive about them. The
halo effect can come into play at any stage of the hiring process. You may
see a candidate worked at a highly regarded company or graduated from an elite
school, but if there’s anything we’ve learned about the 2019 College Admissions Scandal, it’s to not judge a
candidate on the merit of their name-brand education. The halo effect can
be dangerously blinding when it comes to reviewing candidates.
When
reviewing a stack of applications, you are probably looking for something
unique that makes a candidate stand out from the rest. When you do this, also
consider the candidate without that one gleaming attribute and see how their
experiences, skills and personalities compare to other candidates who
may not have had the same privileges or opportunities.
The Horns Effect is the tendency people have to view
another person negatively after learning something unpleasant or negative about
them. The direct opposite of the halo effect, the horns effect can cause hiring
teams to weed out candidates based on a trait that is averse to the team’s
preferences. This could be something as trivial as the candidate working with a
company you personally dislike or the candidate displaying a particular
quirk or mannerism during the interview.
Such
traits may alter your perception of the candidate entirely even though it’s a
small factor that may not even be relevant. If you have a negative
feeling about a candidate, take the time to figure out exactly where that
‘gut feeling’ is coming from. It may be something superficial or insignificant
that shouldn’t affect their chance at the role. You may also want to check with
the rest of the interviewing team to understand the root of their opinions and
preferences about a candidate.
“Whatever we plant in our
subconscious mind, and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become
a reality.” (Earl Nightingale)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“12 Unconscious Bias Examples and How to Avoid Them in
the Workplace” by Bailey Reiners
·
“6 Ways to Overcome Your Biases for Good” by Alice Boyes
·
“How to
Overcome Unconscious and Hidden Biases” Co-authored by Trudi Griffin
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