Efforts to create more diverse workplaces have landed on many employers’ radar screens in recent years. The tech industry, notably, has been exposed as being overwhelmingly male and white, leading some of those influential employers to do some soul searching. They and employers in an array of other fields have devised programs resulting in improvement, but they acknowledge that more progress is needed on the diversity front. 
Now that many employers have implemented programs aimed at hiring, retaining, and promoting a diverse workforce, a new term—unconscious bias—is coming into the spotlight. But how can employers fight something if they’re not conscious of it? If people don’t even see their biases, they’re fighting blind. That may sound nearly impossible, but those who have studied the issue have identified ways to start.
Matthew A. Lafferman, an attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of the global law firm Dentons, points to training and other employment practices that can bring unconscious bias into focus.
- Awareness. Lafferman says employers are seeing success through training programs that help people identify their own biases. When people are made aware of biases they haven’t seen in themselves, unconscious bias can be reduced.
- Checklists. Lafferman also says checklists are gaining traction. An employer can devise a checklist to use in making employment decisions that is designed with diversity in mind. A carefully thought-out checklist of factors to consider goes a long way toward eliminating a manager’s personal biases that otherwise might sneak into a decision. Using such a checklist can make sure an employer is “not relying on amorphous standards,” Lafferman says, adding that employers implementing checklists should be strict in requiring their use, allowing managers to stray from them only when there’s a “very valid reason.”
- Joint, blind interviews. When evaluating applicants, Lafferman encourages interviews with multiple people from diverse backgrounds to reduce the likelihood of one person’s biases exerting undue influence over the hiring decision. Also, implementing a blind process can help. By hiding certain aspects of applicants, such as where they’re from, what school they went to, even their names, employers reduce the chance of being swayed by unconscious bias that holds certain people back.
- Setting goals. Lafferman also says employers who set minimum diversity goals can help increase the number of women and minorities in their workforce, which in turn can make companies more competitive and less likely to face discrimination claims.
Google actions
Tech giant Google is among the employers going public with efforts to fight unconscious bias and, as a result, improve diversity numbers. The company’s diversity section of its website shows that 70 percent of its overall global workforce is male and 30 percent is female, according to data from January 2015. The company’s ethnicity breakdown shows that 60 percent of its overall U.S. workforce is white, 31 percent Asian, 3 percent two or more races, 3 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black, and less than 1 percent “other.”
Those figures refer to the company’s overall workforce. When broken down into various segments, the numbers change. For example, globally women hold just 18 percent of the company’s tech positions, and 22 percent of the leadership positions, according to the company’s 2015 data.
When ethnicity of the company’s U.S. workforce is broken down, the statistics show that 59 percent of the tech jobs are held by whites, 35 percent by Asians, 3 percent by those of two or more races, 2 percent by Hispanics, 1 percent by blacks, and less than 1 percent by others. Among the leadership positions, the breakdown shows white people hold 72 percent of the top jobs, Asians 23 percent, blacks 2 percent, two or more races 2 percent, Hispanics 1 percent, and other less than 1 percent.
The website also outlines efforts the company is taking to improve diversity, such as working with historically black colleges and universities to revamp their introduction to computer science curriculum and bringing on students from those schools as summer interns.
The website also points out that in the past the company’s “university-focused hiring programs have relied heavily on a relatively small number of schools, and those schools aren’t always the most diverse.” But over the last couple of years, “we’ve doubled the number of schools where we recruit and in 2015, nearly 20% of the hires we make from a university are from these new campuses.”
In addition to the work the company has done related to universities, Lafferman points out research the company has conducted showing how company policy was holding women back. He explained that for certain positions, Google requires employees to nominate themselves for promotion.
When the company examined its data, it found that self-nomination requirement often was “out of the norm of female conduct.” When the leadership put out the word that self-promotion was expected and desirable, that training reduced the hesitance to self-promote and progress was made, Lafferman said.
Need to learn more? Tune in Wednesday, March 30, for the BLR webinar Unconscious Bias in the Workplace: How to Recognize It, Prevent It, and Protect Your Company from Damaging Litigation. Speaker Matthew A. Lafferman will guide you through how to recognize the unconscious biases that may be lurking in your workplace and share practical pointers on how to remedy the situation. This program has been pre-approved for 1.5 hours of general recertification credit toward PHR and SPHR recertification. For more information, click here.