Overcoming Bias in the Workplace: A Guide for HR Leaders

Workplaces differ, and bias might occur at times. Bias in the workplace hinders employees’ growth, undermines teamwork, and is the surest method for creating a terrible work atmosphere. This is critical to address bias in the workplace in order to provide everyone with a level playing field and equal opportunities.

A latest Gartner report suggests that about 35% of HR leaders believe diversity, equity, and inclusion are very important. This shows that working on bias alone isn’t enough. This necessitates actions such as education, raising awareness, and ensuring that everyone participates.

What Is Workplace Bias? 

Workplace bias is when people project unfair judgment on others because of their racial or ethnic background, gender, age, or other personal attributes. It might manifest hiring, assigning responsibilities, or comparing them to others in their workgroup. Bias can be both conscious and unconscious.

Conscious bias is if you are aware that you make a certain decision and you know why. Unconscious bias is when you do something but show favoritism to another group or otherwise without realizing it. It’s very challenging to fight unconscious bias sometimes because you don’t realize you do it. Here’s an example of unconscious bias:

For instance, a manager hiring for a new opening may not even have any conscious awareness of a preference for one candidate over another because that candidate resembles the manager or went to the same school. This would now be an unconscious bias, as the manager does not even realize the favoritism they are showing.

Bias, Stereotypes, and Discrimination: How Do They Vary?

David Magnani, Managing Partner of M&A Executive Search said, a bias is a sentiment or idea that unfairly favors or disadvantages one individual or group over another. It is either conscious or unconscious and affects the way one perceives another person and the way one treats them.

Stereotype means an oversimplification of beliefs toward a group of people. It doesn’t take into account individual differences. To think that all women can cook well is to stereotype them.

Discrimination is a treatment that involves injustice or prejudice because of personal biases and stereotypes. It refers to disparities in treatment based on race, gender, age, or other factors.

Here is a simple example:

Suppose you are recruiting employees for a new opening in your workplace. You may hold a bias against very young candidates. The stereotype may thus come into play when judging the youngsters as inexperienced and irresponsible. Since you would not interview them, you would be discriminating against them.

Dangers of Bias in the Workplace

Consider your workplace to be a sports team. Each player differs in his or her own light during a game. Like in sports, a diverse team is strong because it comprises many different strengths and perspectives.

Bias may be a problem at work. It’s like we blindfold ourselves from letting in the most potential of our colleagues. When it comes to hiring new employees, we tend to prefer people that look like ourselves rather than based on their qualifications. The absence of diversity can cut our ideas and innovations short.

Diversity is good because it provides new ideas and new ways of looking at things. It aids in dealing with change and competing better. We can widen our idea pool when we hire people from different backgrounds, which gives us the ability to solve major problems in various ways.

Bias can also lead us to pass on qualified candidates from underrepresented groups. It’s like passing on a star player simply because that player doesn’t look like other stars.

Jessica Shee, Tech Editor of M3datarecovery.com said, there are initiatives we may take to reduce bias in the workplace. We may start by recognizing that we all have biases, which are not necessarily harmful. What counts is that you identify your biases and try to overcome them.

We can shift attention to the set of skills and qualifications that truly matter through fair and consistent hiring practices. In that way, structured interviews with fair criteria assess each candidate fairly.

Building a bias-free workplace will take time; hence, training sessions and workshops will be particularly helpful in making the team members understand and overcome their biases. We should seek diverse perspectives on decision-making processes.

By embracing diversity and fostering inclusiveness, we enrich the contributions of each of our team members. It is only then that diverse teams will mean winning teams.

Types of Biases in the Workplace

Biases in the workplace can hinder employee’s productivity and negatively affect their growth. Here’re some common types of workplace biases you should know:

Conformity Bias

This is when you are forced to move with the majority opinion, even if you feel that your argument was the best. You might be in a meeting and feel that your thought is right, yet second-guess yourself simply because everyone else seems to agree on something else. 

This could be improved if one writes down opinions during meetings as to his or her own thoughts and other people’s opinions, makes a decision, and decides on one’s own thoughts.

Beauty Bias

This is when people show favoritism based on an individual’s appearance. For example, hiring job applicants simply because one perceives them as attractive. You can do some blind interviews or just pay less attention to their looks and more to their qualification for the job.

Affinity Bias

This is when you lean towards people you somehow connect to, like someone who went to the same school or enjoyed doing the same things. To avoid this, be aware of your personal biases and pay more attention to the candidate’s professional qualifications.

Halo Effect

This occurs when one favorable characteristic dominates over others. For example, if a candidate has a great education, you can easily overlook the fact that they have no experience. To bypass this, make a list of plus and negative attributes so that your assessment will be balanced.

Horns Effect

This is the reverse of the halo effect. It means allowing one unfavorable trait to overwhelm the others. For example, you interview a candidate who makes a minor error in speaking; due to that negligible error, you may overlook all the good qualities they have. To reduce this bias, do the same sort of balanced evaluation as for the halo effect.

Similarity Bias

This form of bias occurs when you have a preference for people that resemble you. 

Maybe you would want to hire a candidate because they are your age or because they have grown up much like you. Neutralize this tendency by encouraging diversity training and exposure to many types of people.

Contrast Effect

This is when you compare candidates among themselves rather than against the requirements of the opening. A good instance would be employing an applicant who isn’t most suitable for the job but outperforms those interviewed. The best prevention against this is training hiring staff on best practices and keeping them channeled toward job-specific qualifications.

Attribution Bias

This would mean attributing success or failure to luck or talent. For example, a manager might consider an individual who has succeeded as the one who was ‘lucky’, while the person who fails is deemed not to have the required skill. To curb this, managers should be trained in the art of objective evaluation of the subordinate’s performance.

Confirmation Bias

It’s information that confirms your beliefs, essentially. For example, if you believe a candidate fits, then you start looking for evidence that confirms this even though it might not be true. To circumvent this, hiring teams need training in confirmation bias and how to avoid the concept.

Affect Heuristics

This occurs when peripheral factors are involved, for example, a person’s appearance or name. To avoid this, use facts and proof instead of intuition.

Illusory Correlation

This is where you connect two things that have no connection whatsoever. For example, you may think that a candidate fits because he or she has the same colored shirt as you. To beat this bias, it is best not to make superficial connections by assuming a connection. 

Intuition Bias

This is through reliance on emotion rather than fact in decision-making. For example, you hire a candidate whom you feel is good, even though he lacks the requirements. In this respect, base decisions on evidence to avoid over-reliance on intuition.

10 Proven Ways to Address Bias in the Workplace 

Listed below are some proven approaches to addressing bias in the workplace: 

Know your unconscious biases: Each of us has unconscious biases, which are spontaneous ideas and sentiments that might influence our behavior without our conscious knowledge. To reduce bias, the first step will be to accept that these biases exist. You can investigate your personal biases by using the implicit association test.

Make informed decisions: Unconscious bias can lead one toward quick and impulsive decisions. To make wiser decisions, one must step back and reflect on options deeply. Weigh all the variables of the factors involved and refrain from making hasty decisions.

Test your team’s behavior: Observe yourself and your team members. Are you being fair to everyone? Are judgments made because someone dislikes the individual or because a condition was not met? Reflect on your actions, considering whether there is any element of bias.

Be vigilant about protected characteristics: The Equality Act prevents various traits, including age, disability, gender, pregnancy, color, religion, and others, from being used to discriminate against individuals. Make sure that everything you do is not just fair but also legally correct.

Expand social circles: Interacting with individuals from different backgrounds will help you understand their cultures better. This will reduce your biases and present you as an accommodating leader.

Establish boundaries of behavior: Encourage a work environment where everyone can express their views and opinions with ease. Set acceptable behavioral standards and treat everyone as professionals.

Avoid jumping to conclusions: Never assume anything about a person when you do not have much information. Always get facts for making decisions. Stay away from preconceived notions or stereotypical gut feelings or intuitions.

Use rotations to prevent routines: Rotation of tasks among team members might avoid the bias’s infiltration. This would also ensure that your team works in a fair and balanced way.

Challenge bias: If you see or experience biased behavior, try to say something. Make people understand that what they are doing is not acceptable and that everyone deserves equal treatment.

Accountability for mistakes: Bias in your error? Apologize and make the necessary corrections right away. It implies you are dedicated to creating a more inclusive workplace.

Building Inclusive Workplaces

Unconscious bias needs to be tackled in order for thriving workplaces to exist. HR leaders are the stakeholders. They can use different tools and tactics to combat bias and foster diversity, but they must first be aware that the problem even exists.

Unconscious bias training provides a path to higher productivity and more satisfying outcomes for HR leaders who strive to create a fair workplace. Lastly, improved employee satisfaction leads to greater productivity and innovation.

Let’s make your workplaces more inclusive.