Unconscious bias: what is it and who is responsible?

[Opinions are my own and not associated with the university].

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Last week a Sheffield Hallam University study has found that obese men and women are less likely to be employed because of their weight.

“Each of the employers who took part in the study were given identical, hypothetical CVs with accompanying photographs depicting fat and thin people. Each of the applicants met all the criteria stated within the job descriptions and person specifications and they were each given a suitability score out of 42.

Men of a normal weight received an average overall score of 39.14 while the obese male applicants scored 25.38.

The average suitability score for women of a normal weight was 34.65 out of a possible 42 while women who were obese scored 23.31.

The study also concluded that those CVs without an accompanying photograph scored higher than the applicants whose photos depicted an obese man (scoring 30.42) and an obese woman who scored 28.27.”

Read the full article on: http://www.poandpo.com/business-as-usual/obese-men-women-less-likely-to-be-employed-10-5-2016/

This got me thinking more about the unconscious biases we face everyday. Recruiters are expected to be fair throughout the recruitment process, judging candidates purely for their suitability against the person specification and criteria, but unfortunately this is not always the case. As we can see from the above article, even the addition of a photo sways recruiters to use their inherent personal preferences to make a judgement. Do companies do enough to counteract this?

To answer this we need to firstly explore what unconscious bias really is. The Equality Challenge Unit says, “implicit or unconscious bias happens by our brains making incredibly quick judgments and assessments of people and situations without us realising. Our biases are influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences. We may not even be aware of these views and opinions, or be aware of their full impact and implications.”

It is often said that we find ourselves preferring ‘people like us’. So if a White British man is on the recruitment panel then he is likely to unconsciously prefer the candidate that looks like him; or the basketball player on the panel prefers the candidate who also plays basketball; or the new mum favours the person who has just returned from parental leave. We are naturally drawn to people that we have commonalities with, we find comfort in what we know, regardless of whether we believe this to be the right choice. This can manifest itself in a bias recruitment process, such as the above example of weight and gender bias.

So what can we do? Many organisations deliver equality and diversity training, informing their staff population of the policies and procedures that they must abide by. This is a fantastic opportunity to inform staff of the requirements of the Equality Act 2010, aiming to prevent direct and indirect discrimination and provide an overall inclusive workplace. But this is a conscious act – a decision to take on board the information presented and it offers only a brief opportunity for staff to focus on equality and diversity.

Other organisations, including ours, also complement this with unconscious bias training. They widen the equality and diversity training emphasis to incorporate awareness of the natural, implicit biases that we all have. This is set in the context of our workplace, offering examples and scenarios that staff are likely to relate to. Should we be expecting all companies to deliver similar training? You could argue that the smaller organisations cannot afford to invest in such training, but perhaps these are the companies that are also more likely to allow implicit bias into their recruitment processes?

For example, I was recently talking to someone about the company they work for: a medium-sized company in the automotive industry. They don’t have any female employees in their company. None.

He argued that the working hours are not manageable if you have children: a statement that can be contended from many perspectives, notably the assumption that a) all women have children  and b) no man is involved with the care of their child. But what I find very hard to believe is that no women apply to work there. They’re a medium-sized company, and they offer a sizeable amount of jobs, so why wouldn’t at least the occasional female apply? Perhaps unconscious bias has a part in this.

Are there companies out there, like ours, that see unconscious bias training as an integral part of their equality and diversity training to ensure they offer an inclusive environment to all employees whilst there are companies, like the above, that see no problem with the way they work and have no awareness of unconscious biases? Perhaps it is time for the government to make unconscious bias training (or awareness) a legal requirement. Remove the choice to train on unconscious bias and perhaps this will improve the diversity of staff nationwide in a fair way.

If you want to check your unconscious biases try taking the Harvard Implicit Association test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/uk/

If you’re a member of Sheffield Hallam staff then you can undertake our unconscious bias training at: https://portal.shu.ac.uk/departments/HRD/equality/Pages/online%20modules.aspx