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Removing the barriers to change: The role of unconscious bias on everyday assumptions and decisions
Dan Robertson Diversity & Inclusion Director Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion
A bat and ball cost £1.10
The bat costs one pound more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
Diversity & Inclusion: What’s the difference?
Diversity is …
Inclusion is …
Diversity and organisational culture
Organisational cultures often work against the diversity and inclusion principles…
…simply because we have a natural tendency to recruit people like us.
Organisations also demanded high levels of conformity.
What is unconscious bias?
“Unconscious biases are our unintentional people preferences….
They are the result of our limited cognitive capacity; we implicitly and automatically both group and categorise people to avoid having to conduct completely new assessments for every new person.
We unconsciously assign positive and negative value to the categories we use.”
The nature of bias: The process of fast and slow thinking
System One (Fast thinking)•Driven by intuition and emotions
System Two (Slow thinking)•Requires attention and effort•Helps to regulate System One
Unconscious biases are triggered and enacted between 30 and 100 milliseconds (Conscious thinking takes 300 milliseconds to even begin processing)
The ‘smart’ brain is lazy. It likes to work efficiently and minimise the work of the frontal lobes.
What the brain fires together, it wires together, forming emotional associations
They are automatic and rapid
The neurology of Bias
Fast thinking and social stereotypes
A bat and ball cost £1.10
The bat costs one pound more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
Explicit vs Implicit Social Bias
(Abrams & Houston 2006) Jones, P 2005 Implicitly 3000
Affinity bias
Affinity (like me) bias: leads us to favour people who are like us.
Commonness leads to Comfort leads to Competence
“He reminds me of myself at his age”
Gender, ethnicity, social background, accent, nationality, sexual orientation and disability.
Challenge- Feedback
The Talent Pipeline
•People in organisations are anxious to have conversations about difference for fear of causing offense
•Results in ‘social distancing’ behaviours and a failure to capitalise on otherwise positive relationships
De-Biasing People Decisions Check List
1. Know your own (individual/group) biases 2. Don’t get anxious about saying ‘the right thing’3. Change your newspaper4. Attend a employee or community network: e.g. LGBT5. Have lunch with one different and ask for their ideas 6. Watch for who attends social and community events7. Take a chance; allocate a task or piece of work which involves
trusting someone / a group new and different8. Politely ask someone to explain a work allocation or a funding
decision9. Sit in on someone else’s discussions and listen for affinity bias 10. Mentor or sponsor some different to you
Making a Change
Attitude
Organisational Norms
Behavioural Controls
Intention Behaviour
How easy is it?
How will others judge me?
How do I feel about it?
When......... ...............I Will
Dan Robertson Diversity & Inclusion DirectorEmployers Network for Equality & InclusionTel: 07946 466 180 E: [email protected] Twitter: @dan_robertson1
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