Unconscious Bias

With Indigenous Business Month just passed and NAIDOC Week arrived at long last, now is an ideal and important time to be thinking about inclusivity and diversity within your organisation. While we often think of bias as an intentional prejudice against race, gender or religion, there are unconscious prejudices being made against individuals and groups of people each and every day, and it is time to acknowledge these, and address them both in ourselves and in our workplaces.

Unconscious bias is a set of prejudices that are automatic and hidden to us. They can often form our decision-making without us even being aware of it, resulting in an exclusive and limiting work environment. Our biases may result from a particular upbringing or experience. They are a way for our brains to quickly categorise and process information in our modern day-to-day lives, and can be really useful. We learn at a young age that fire is hot which is painful, and if you pull the dog’s tail, it will most likely growl or bite. The danger in this categorisation process comes when our biases mould our reality to fit these prejudices through our decision-making, and we begin to hold ourselves or other people back.

Our personality, upbringing, religion, appearance, ethnicity, age and gender all contribute to our diversity footprint, and can result in us orienting ourselves to those who reflect us. Instead of seeing the world as it is, we see the world as we are, and this can be hindering when striving to create an inclusive and representative workplace and community.
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There are more than 150 cognitive biases that we do not really talk about. These biases can impact integral business processes such as recruitment and hiring; organisation development; supply market analysis and procurement. Being educated on the types of unconscious bias that are common in workplaces can make us aware of when they are influencing our actions, decision making and workplace structures. We can begin to look critically at our own thoughts, and work culture, and begin the sometime hard yet rewarding work of creating an unprejudiced and inclusive environment.

Some examples of biases to look out for are:

• Affinity Bias: the tendency people have to connect with others who share similar interested, experiences and backgrounds.
• Confirmation Bias: the inclination to draw conclusions about a situation or person based on your personal desires, beliefs, and prejudices, rather than on unbiased merit.
• Conformity Bias: the tendency people have to act in a similar way to the people around them, regardless of their own personal beliefs or idiosyncrasies.
• The Halo Effect: the tendency people have to place another person on a pedestal after learning something impressive about them.

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Knowing where unconscious bias can emerge in a workplace allows us to be proactive in implementing strategies to prevent it. These strategies can include looking at your supply market critically and ensuring that it represents a diversity of groups; creating policy and procedures to ensure that your recruitment practices do not exclude certain groups of people; and through staff training, creating greater awareness of biases and discrimination within your organisation.

The importance of educating and training your staff in unconscious bias awareness cannot be underestimated, as it is your staff that create your work culture. In day-to-day interactions and team meetings, the natural tendency to listen more to those who are similar to ourselves, whether that’s in appearance, age, race, gender, or experience, can result in a potentially devastating pattern of behaviours that stifle true inclusivity and diversity. Most of us have experienced the feeling of not being given a voice in team situations, and how this can often lead to us feeling diminished in confidence, self-worth, and with our ideas and ability overlooked. When this happens in a workplace, it can be damaging to not just the individual but to the organisation, as voices are not being heard, and new ideas and perspectives being stifled.
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The good news is that once we have an awareness and understanding of our unconscious bias, we have a genuine opportunity to change it. When beginning on the journey of workplace diversity, there are three steps to addressing unconscious bias:

1. Awareness – becoming aware of our own personal beliefs or behaviours, and how we react to certain people, events, and circumstances.
2. Acceptance – acknowledging our belief or behaviour and accepting it and your own role in it.
3. Action – Drawing on your awareness and acceptance to act differently. Commit to making a conscious choice to not react as you have always done.​ ​

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