Embracing Diversity and Removing Bias

Diversity significantly contributes to an organization's competitive advantage. The ability of an organization to commit to hiring a diverse workforce is challenging for a number of reasons. First, there are only so many positions available for a qualified pool of people to hire. Second, people within the organization might not be committed in full to hire a diverse workforce. Third, the organization itself may not have systems in place to engage a diverse workforce.

To get everyone on board with having a diverse workforce, try the following strategies to get people thinking in new and creative ways:

• Analysis First: It is important to take a look at the organization to understand its relationship with diversity. This means a closer look must be taken at the organization's policies, procedures, hiring strategies, orientation, training, performance appraisal system, goals, mission and values. Examine if these structures support or inhibit the growth of diversity in your company.
• Understand Diversity: Many times, "you don't know what you don't know," as the saying goes. In other words, some people haven't been exposed to diversity issues, challenges and opportunities. Having “brown bag lunch talks” in which diversity is the featured topic can lead to improvements.
• Senior Leaders & Diversity Champions: The senior leadership needs to talk about diversity in a public setting. Employees need to hear from the top that diversity is important. When leadership positions are being hired, hiring managers must do their part to seek diverse candidates. Special attention must also be paid to "diversity champions": those who get it and want to do something about it. These are the folks who can act as catalysts to get others excited about diversity.
• Orientation & Training: Diversity must be a keynote topic during orientation and throughout training. The more people hear about diversity, the more opportunities they will have to observe and understand what it means to them and their department. For hiring managers, this implies being more open when hearing a person with an accent. It implies keeping an open mind and working to discover the individual's unique strengths.
• Institutionalizing Diversity: It is one thing to talk about diversity. It is quite another to have a systematic approach for embracing it. Institutionalization comes down to proactively discovering ways to integrate diversity within the organizational culture. For instance, diversity might be integrated into the organization's training program, where people learn more about diversity. Diversity could also become an organizational value, where people discover ways to bring the value to life and create a diverse work environment.
• Moving Diversity Forward: All organizations seek to improve in some way. By embracing diversity, an organization can significantly improve by gaining new perspectives and insights. The key is to look at diversity as a way to grow the organization and take it to the next level. The more positive outcomes that are achieved with diversity, the more diversity gets branded as a positive employee experience. The "diversity experience" will begin to take on a life of its own with proper maintenance and dedication.
• Branch Out: Organizations often put their public relations and/or public affairs departments in charge of projects of social responsibility. This is another way for organizations to learn about a community's diversity assets. Not only could organizations contribute to their communities, but they can also team up with diverse individuals, who might one day be an employee, customer, vendor or board member.

Pertaining to Interviews

More specifically, managers involved in recruitment have a duty to conduct selection interviews fairly and without bias for or against any particular candidate. This is harder than most people think, because all human beings are affected by bias and prejudice, and these often operate at a subconscious level. It is therefore important for managers responsible for recruitment decisions to recognise how bias might influence their thinking.

• Recognise that candidates from different racial backgrounds may have different ways of communicating their achievements at a job interview. For example, candidates from certain ethnic backgrounds may, on account of their racial or cultural background, be relatively reserved as regards their experience and achievements. Another point to be aware of is that in some cultures it is considered impolite to make direct eye contact with a person in authority.
• Guard against the 'halo effect'. This occurs when something about a job applicant creates a favourable first impression on the interviewer with the result that he or she may not be able to view the candidate's suitability for the job objectively or recognise any negative elements in his or her background. The interviewer might, for example, find the applicant's manner, accent or appearance pleasing, or might discover that he or she attended the same school or university as the applicant.
• Recognise your own general personal attitudes, views and likes/dislikes with regard to people, and learn to put these to one side during selection interviews.
• Distinguish between the information that the candidate is presenting and the mode of presentation. Unless presentation skills are relevant to the job in question, a slick and/or confident presentation style will be irrelevant to the person's suitability for the job.
• Do not allow the initial impression of a job applicant to influence the selection decision, for example by making negative assumptions about an applicant based on mode of dress, general appearance or accent.

Points provided above are issues that hiring managers should be aware of when interviewing candidates. It is important to embrace and understand the varied diverse cultures readily present in our surroundings. This is more evident when dealing with recruitment.

References

The Scottish Government, Health and Community Care, Diversity Task Force, ‘Avoiding Bias’, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/NHS-Scotland/DiversityTaskForce/Avoidingbias