Bias can have severely negative impacts on people and in businesses if we lose our objectiveness
Unconscious bias is actually a rather scary concept, but it’s nonetheless something that nearly everybody is subject to. In simple terms, unconscious bias refers to the biases we have towards others that aren’t in our conscious control. When we meet people, we make instant assessments of them – normally based on our own experiences, and cultural environment and background.
Most of us like to believe we’re open-minded and objective. However, in reality, many of our opinions, values and beliefs stem from our families, our culture, and a lifetime of experiences that all combine to heavily influence how we view and judge other people and ourselves. These biases we’ve all built up over time help us to process information quickly and efficiently which, from a survival standpoint, can actually equate to a positive and necessary trait. After all, it’s something natural which we have, without purposeful intervention and little control.
However, bias can have severely negative impacts on people and in businesses if we lose our objectiveness – and, ultimately, make unfounded judgements that lead to missed opportunities.
Bias in the workplace
In the workplace, unconscious biases can mean we sometimes treat a specific group or individuals based on a set of assumptions that we perhaps don’t fully appreciate we hold. However, this is not behaviour that could be described as rational, and only by recognising these biases within ourselves that we can start to tackle and ultimately remove them
And remove them we must try to do – for the effects of bias, however subtle, can actually be quite devastating to a business and its community. If we don’t show each and every member of a team an equal amount of warmth and acceptance, over time, this failure to interact with everybody on an equal basis can impact an organisation quite negatively: staff can begin to feel alienated, and a whole host of problems can begin to unfold.
So it’s important you begin to put in place some initiatives to start the process of overcoming unconscious bias throughout your company and, with proper training, this can be done quite readily. We’ve put together five tactics for overcoming unconscious bias in the workplace.
1. Begin with participants exploring their own unconscious biases
Your course should begin with helping participants to explore their own levels of unconscious bias. What are they? Where do they come from? How do they affect their behaviour towards others? Once these issues have been identified, only then can issues of bias in the workplace be addressed.
Breaking the habit of bias always begins with initial recognition of the habit. Gaining insight into the subconscious helps us realise the issues that need to be addressed and tackled.
Participants can be encouraged to write down what they think their biases might be, why they think they have them, and to recall an occasion where their biases have been proved wrong. To help participants identify what their biases may be, there’s an online implicit association test (IAT) that can be taken to help people identify their unconscious preferences.
2. Use simulation
Participants can often benefit by being submerged in a simulated environment as a new employee among a group of others, for instance. The simulation can involve the micro-gestures or lack of eye contact often associated with our unconscious biases. Other simulations can include conducting interviews, reviewing appraisals and dealing with customers.
Putting the participant in the shoes of the recipient of a prejudice can help enlighten them towards their own behaviours, and how damaging even the subtlest of gestures may be.
3. Choose the right facilitator
Not just anybody should be given the role of unconscious bias training. This is a serious topic, so must be the reserve of somebody who is passionate about it as this passion will be infectious. Trainers should always be highly qualified in diversity, social psychology and attitude formation.
It’s also imperative their style is non-threatening, inclusive, and not resort to using guilt trips as this can lead to resentment of the course – rendering the content redundant.
4. Use counter-stereotyping and debiasing activities and representations
In your course, it’s important to start making associations contrary to existing stereotypes. For example, think about incorporating media that features male nurses, elderly athletes, female bus drivers etc. The idea is to challenge participants’ expectations, and so shed light on their own biases while at the same time challenging them.
5. Micro-inequities and micro-affirmations
Participants need to be made aware of how they might be displaying micro-inequities that show their unconscious bias at work. Micro-inequities are the small, sometimes barely perceptible gestures – things such as eye-rolling, mispronouncing someone’s name repeatedly, not introducing a person that can leave the target unsure if they really are being alienated, or just being over-sensitive.
Over time, if a person experiences lots of these, then it can lead to low self-esteem – which, in turn, can lead to low productivity and even depression.
Micro-affirmations are the remedy to micro-inequities. They are small gestures of inclusion and respect that anyone can make. Using them means you’re consciously overriding your own unconscious biases to become fairer, more thoughtful and more respectful in our perceptions and dealings with colleagues.
We run a one-day unconscious bias training course that acts as a supplement to our unconscious bias eLearning module, which is designed for professionals and employees seeking to gain insight into unconscious bias and workplace behaviour.
Watch ‘Unconscious Bias: How it affects your business’ featuring Dan Robertson, the then Diversity and Inclusion Manager of the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (enei):
eLearning content: Delivered by Ciphr, powered by Marshalls
Explore our courses
And find out more about our unconscious bias eLearning courses
This content was initially published on Marshallelearning.com (December 2014) and has been uploaded to and lightly amended on Ciphr.com as part of the brand amalgamation in August 2024