Conscious Vs Unconscious Bias at the Workplace and how to eliminate it
By: Geetika Tripathi
Tags: Unconscious Bias, Bias, Future Of Work, Diversity, Inclusion

Human beings are inherently and unknowingly prejudiced creatures. The place of birth, upbringing, culture, ethos ,language and several other influencing factors infuse bias into a lot of our activities, outlook and perception towards people and things. As a result, we are always more than ready to stereotype people and things. Science says that bias has a deep-rooted effect on the brains of individuals .What is bias ? What are Conscious and Unconscious biases ? With such a strong impact that bias has ,it is undeniable that even the workplaces of today are shaped and swayed by this wave and several processes are influenced by this factor. How does bias affect an organization ?Learn about all this and more on how to minimize and eventually eliminate bias from the workplace to promote employee wellbeing ,organizational growth and customer success.

Most of us have come experienced bias in our day to day lives either by being subjected to it ,being spectators to it or probably inflicting it upon the others we deal with. Thereby, our workplaces are also no exception to it. What are two most common categories of bias ?What can be the ways to diminish or eliminate them to make the employees empowered and motivated and to enable any organization to thrive and succeed.

CONSCIOUS VS UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

Dating back to 1915, Sigmund Freud deduced his theory of human consciousness wherein he segregated it into 3 groups :the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious corresponding to id, ego, and superego as can be seen in the figure. While the conscious consists of everything that we are cognizant of(ourselves and the surroundings) ,the unconscious delves into a huge repository of thoughts and feelings which are outside of the conscious awareness .

PictureCredit: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/introduction-to-consciousness/

Bias means holding prejudice against or for an individual based on the gender, race, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability or other factors. This aspect is considered unfair and unjust .Bias for a person promotes favoritism and Bias against someone signifies inequality. Both are detrimental trends and signify an unhealthy organization.

Conscious Bias is to be aware and still be intentionally biased whereas Unconscious Bias is being prejudiced without being aware or realizing the gravity and consequences. An example of conscious bias being a manager favoring a particular employee for an assignment. This person has the same mother tongue as him in a multi-lingual ,multi-cultural team. Thus, conscious bias comes into play .

Now let us look at some numbers from various modes of study and research all around the globe that hint at the presence of inherent biases as the primary reason for these figures.

· Women occupy only 10 percent of top management positions in S&P 1500 Companies.

· In 2019, a survey revealed that just 27 percent of U.S. adults felt that there was enough representation of LGBTQ people in movie and TV roles

· A study from the Kapor Center, Pivotal Ventures and Arizona State University’s Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology found that women of color form a miniscule 4 percent in the overall Tech group.

· Over a third (36%) of people tend to think of disabled people as not as productive as everyone else.

These dwindling numbers of representation point brazenly at the prevalent biases all around us in different fields of work.

Moving on towards unconscious bias, there are several types of unconscious bias ,some of them depicted below:

Some examples that can be attributed to the above categories are –

Halo Effect Selecting a candidate in an interview for a critical role just because he/she is from a certain reputed college

Horn effect Not considering an employee for a promising project just because he failed to deliver an impromptu speech in an ice breaker event.

Affinity Bias Shortlisting a candidate for interview just because she goes to the same Tennis club and plays brilliantly.

Gender Bias The paltry ratio of women in STEM fields as compared to men due to a lot of people feeling that women are not strongly suited for such areas and jobs.

Ageism Appointing a young employee to oversee the new setup of computers in a hardware store assuming that the older and experienced employee may not be having the technical know-how.

Conformation Bias Shortlisting a resume based on the fact that the candidate has similar interests and hometown as the recruitment official.

And a few others –

Appearance Bias Selecting an attractive well-dressed employee for a key client presentation over someone who has better experience and knowledge in the area but not having an equivalent appearance.

Name Bias A study revealing that white names receive 50% more callbacks for interviews than African American names.

IMPACT OF BIAS

We have already seen the dwindling ratio of women in STEM studies and work areas. A large number of women shy away from applying for jobs when pregnant and a huge number are hesitant to rejoin work after maternity fearing the biases that would be affecting the recruiters or the bosses and team members. Differently abled people are only provided with routine and low skill jobs .Aged employees are not provided with roles and tasks that need innovation. These are some of the stark examples of Bias in workplace .Summing up the deep impact that bias has on the functioning and well — being of any organization –

· Lower morale and reduced employee engagement

· Affected performance and increased attrition

· Inadequate utilization of diverse talent

· Stunted growth and innovation

· Unhealthy environment for teamwork and collaboration

· Affected profits and increased costs

· Damaged Brand name and Brand value

· Lawsuits (in the worst case)

As we can see that the price paid by an organization as a result of biased means and ways is enormous.

What can be done to decimate and eventually annihilate conscious and unconscious bias from workplace ?

ELIMINATING BIAS AT WORKPLACE

The detailed study ,workshops ,tests and analysis lead to a four-step initial process depicted below-

To summarize ,it starts with unearthing and exploring biases and their occurrence ,analyzing the results ,formulating and standardizing the process to fix the issue and implementing the same.

The following points elaborate the techniques with which workplace bias can be diminished to a great extent :

Start with Adequate Training Ensure that all the employees at various levels of their career become aware of what is conscious and unconscious bias .Awareness Training ,Survey Questionnaires and Implicit Association tests are some of the examples .

Shortlist and Analyze Once the assessment is over, retrospect and start the forum for discussion. List down the most common and likely biases that would affect the organization. Chalk out the action plan to deal with each of them separately and effectively.

Inculcate a culture of diversity and inclusion Introduce diversity in all aspects of recruitment .Hire diverse candidate spanning a mix of age ,gender ,ethnicity ,language ,sexual orientation, score on the spectrum etc. Ensure that the recruitment team is diverse as well. Have diversity objectives for the organization but not only in name albeit in true sense of implementation.

Use uber modern day techniques while hiring

Make use of modern technology like digitization ,AI ,ML etc. to automate and revolutionize the recruitment process. Techniques like “Blind Judging “could be used.

Stringent rules and law There should be strict rules and guidelines to ensure that no conscious bias takes place in any form .There shouldn’t be any discrimination based on age ,gender ,race ,nationality ,sexual orientation etc. of any employee.

Regular feedback Timely 360-degree feedback, pulse check, open forums and other such mechanisms should be implemented to ensure that the employees speak and express their opinions loud and clear .Inculcate a culture of transparency and open dialogue .

Accountability Every employee in the position of power and influence should be accountable and there should be informal discussions to gauge and monitor if at all bias is being exercised.

Sensitization There should be detailed ,adequate and mandatory trainings for all the employees on the topic of diversity and the way to include different members like those belonging to LGBTQ community or differently abled or those who lie on the autism spectrum ,so that there is no influence of any unconscious bias.

Rely on Data and Analytics Instead of solely trusting instincts ,hints and cues ,emphasis should also be laid on collecting the adequate relevant data and using modern decision-making tools and techniques to derive useful insights. They will serve as guiding principles to effectively scale down bias in the organization.

Being biased is inherent human nature. The American playwright Robert Wilson said:

“We all see only that which we are trained to see.”

Even a little child can grow up to be a prejudiced individual if the seeds of bias are sown from childhood. We tend to put people and attributes in boxes, depending on their group, race, gender, country, color and so on. Invariably, the damage done by conscious and unconscious bias to the workplace cannot be denied .Therefore, the success, sustainability and value of an organization is immensely affected by how well it can narrow down the different kinds of biases and create an exemplary work environment which benefits the employees and customers alike.