[MUSIC] An unfortunate reality of the modern world is that, unconscious bias is around us and we see it in action all the time. And certainly you cannot talk about recruitment or certainly think about developing a more inclusive and diverse workforce, if you are not prepared to a acknowledge the fact that bias, both conscious and unconscious exists. Without that you have no issue to solve, but despite the fact that we have so much written about it and so much talking. And I have to say, most organizations in my country Australia, if they haven't been through one lot of unconscious bias training, they've certainly got it planned for the coming year. So unconscious bias is something that we acknowledge, we have training in, people can explain it to you. But it still is running rampant when it comes to many decisions in our communities and certainly in our organizations, and particularly with recruitment. So what I wanted to talk about specifically in this session is, how unconscious bias does permeate the recruitment process and if not dealt with compromises any efforts that you might make? As I just said, it's a difficult thing to talk about, people don't know how to talk about it. And there are ways in which, we can implement approaches to unconscious bias and that's largely by getting people involved in looking at what they do, how they do it. And as we go through the rest of the courses, we'll have some of those very factual practical activities. So as we discussed earlier in the course, unconscious bias is something that we all have. It's built in, it's hardwired, we grow up being influenced by our family, religion, our communities, what we see on television, what we read in books, what are friends say. And very often some of that is, some of those that understanding is not necessarily based on fact. And as we know those responses, those negative responses to certain people, certain groups are often born out of a primeval response to fear. But we're not living in our organizations in the primeval world, we know about unconscious bias and we need to understand how it impacts our own decision making, and decisions that are also being made about us. One of the problems in recruitment is, around types of unconscious bias and again a lot has been written about it. And it's important at every stage of the recruitment process that, you are aware and that your team is aware of how unconscious bias might permeate the process. So of course, probably the one that we think of the most because it's the one that is broadcasted, communicated throughout communities and the society is gender bias. And gender bias, actually stems from our belief about how men and women should behave and should act, so from that we get stereotypes. So for example, we still know that many people will see leadership as being not just a masculine role, but a very dominant, very warrior, like a way of leadership. We know through the way in which decisions are made about employment, that women are still seen to be relegated to what we call, the caring, the nurturing type roles, like human resources, like nursing, etcetera. In my country and I'm sure in yours, if we go back historically, we can actually see where it wasn't just unconscious bias, but that we consciously excluded women by law from undertaking certain roles. For example, it's only in my lifetime that women were allowed to manage underground mines in Australia. It's only in my lifetime that, indigenous people have been allowed to vote. And when we get on to other types of bias like cultural bias, racial bias, they operate in the same way that the gender bias does. So that when we actually confronted by somebody of a different race of a different gender, we associate those people. Even if we don't think we're thinking about it, we often both negative and positive attributes which may not be true. Affinity bias, is another very common bias that we see in recruiting. And this is something where we feel a connection to the candidates. So I will feel a connection to a woman who is another academic, who is interested in the same topics I am and who belongs to the same clubs. And so that affinity, there's something about that person, it's common, I can make a connection. Has nothing to do with the actual role being advertised or the applicants suitability for that role. This is often seeing where people will look at what schools people went to, and well and if they see somebody who's been to a similar school, then they in fact will feel some affinity. So it's really important that when we do make decisions around recruitment and that we do say, I went to that school. Great school, that person must be terrific that, we actually stop ourselves or hopefully there will be a team who can ask us a bit more about why we're choosing that person. One of the other things I wanted to say about affinity biases, we used to hear a lot about organizations talking about they wanted a culture fit, they wanted somebody who fit the culture. Now, if you follow that through and think about it in very basic terms, that means we want people like us, we want people to come into the culture like us. What we're now beginning to see around diversity and inclusion are different words. So we're beginning to see things like, people who can contribute to the culture. And so that idea of culture fit, finding somebody who very comfortably comes in, is something we need to be aware of. And in fact, in some of the research that I've done, I went asking people why they didn't shortlist somebody with, let's say an Asian name who had the qualifications etcetera, met the criteria. People have actually said things like, well I don't know whether they would fit in here and when asked why? Well, because we don't have any other Chinese people here. So we've got to be really careful about, how we think about the culture that yes, we want people who are going to come in and be comfortable and contribute. But that doesn't mean that they're going to be exactly like our culture, but they will add something to it. Attribution bias, is not dissimilar to affinity bias. And this is where we actually say, well that person they went to the university I went to and it's a great university, everybody that comes out of there are terrific people. We're attributing to those people something that, a is irrelevant, but secondly, is not to do with the criteria. And certainly in my country, we still talk about a hierarchy of universities, schools, etcetera. And these are not necessarily and often never of great relevance to a job application. Beauty bias. Well, beauty biases, I'll start at one end of it. People who are seen to be particularly attractive often say, that they experience bias because people don't want beautiful, attractive people in the workplace. Of course, on the other hand, we also have the bias where people are attracted to people who are particularly good looking, whatever that means in your particular culture. But we do know that physical appearance is an important element in our thinking, and we have one state in Australia Victoria, where as part of its anti discrimination legislation, it actually has as a ground physical appearance. We also know from research that people who are seen as overweight are often not shortlisted for positions. Because we make assumptions about their their physical appearance and all of the ideas of people being overweight as being lazy as being uninterested and so on. So the beauty bias, is one that moves around quite a bit and it's one that again also depends on the type of industry. For example, there's a well known international clothing chain that in fact has asked people working in its retail in parts of Asia, to have their eyes Europeanized, because their idea of beauty is a European look. We also know that, in terms of many clothing organizations for women, they like their models, they like their retail staff to be particularly thin and on it goes. And so beauty is something again that shifts in terms of how we perceive beauty, what we associate with physical appearance? Confirmation bias is one that, actually we do very quickly. And what it is, is that when people say something that we connect with, whether or not it's got anything to do with the job. But it's something like, if somebody says that they know somebody you know, they work for somebody that you admire. Something in there makes for a very quick decision and this is called, confirmation bias and often occurs where decisions are made very quickly. The halo effect, is one where we concentrate on one aspect of the person and that one aspect is something that we will then see as being, covering everything that they present. And the halo effect can often be around awards, so an example I can think of is, people who have been elite sports people, when they go for a job which has got nothing to do with sport. Sometimes the people making the decision can be affected by the halo effect because they'll say, what a great footballer, it's terrific, and they don't look at that person's suitability for the role. The other one which is at the opposite end is the, horns effect and that is somebody might just say, something that you totally don't agree with. And that colors your judgment that, affects your judgment for the rest of the recruitment process. Conformity bias that, ties in with what I was talking about cultural fit. We like people who look like, we think organizations should look. For those of you from Australia and I probably think parts of Europe and the UK and the US think about women lawyers. I'm sorry to all of the women lawyers out there, but women lawyers tend to wear very nondescript, small black or daily blue suits and there's a conformity to it. So think about who fits in, would somebody with red and purple hair fit into your organization, does it matter? And this is where we see some changes in culture, for example, tattoos, 30 years ago were fairly rare in Australia. Now, lots and lots of people of all ages have tattoos, there are still tension in some organizations about, employing people with tattoos because it doesn't conform to the idea of what a professional is or what this organization is about. So when we're looking at unconscious bias, we need to look right across the full spectrum of the recruitment process, and it's something that we don't need to carry ourselves alone. We need to be aware, but if you have a recruitment process where you're prepared to sit down and to talk about, how you perceive a particular role. What criteria you think is required for selection and to talk about the candidates. You are more likely in a group to be able to challenge each other and yourself about, the extent to which you are using unconscious bias to make a decision. Or in fact, you are focused on the selection criteria and the attributes that are necessary for that role.
