How to overcome our biases about functional diversity
Unconscious biases that affect our attitude towards people with some kind of disability are especially persistent and hinder efforts to include them in the workplace.
This article forms part of the report ‘Policies and practices for diversity and inclusion: A special study on functional diversity’, published by the Esade Institute for Social Innovation and Ranstad.
Biases are cognitive shortcuts — the result of a rapid, automatic system of thinking — which lead us to classify people intuitively and unconsciously. For example, a bias can push us to feel a natural preference for some people due to affinity or belonging to a group. In reality, all biases have an effect on our daily actions and the decisions we make, but some can have a greater influence on questions of diversity.
Recent research on bias and diversity by Esade's De keersmaecker and Schmid has found that “the presence of selective exposure bias (the act of choosing to consume information aligned with pre-existing beliefs) can be used to predict negative beliefs over time, with those opposed to diversity more likely to strengthen their opinions.” It has been demonstrated that the future views of participants who displayed an anti-diversity stance could be predicted. However, displaying a selective exposure bias did not impact the future views of those who were pro-diversity.
Biases have an effect on our daily actions, but some can have a greater influence on questions of diversity
The Harvard Business Review also offers some revealing conclusions in its research on biases and their negative effect on diversity. According to an article by Cecchi-Dimeglio, one such bias is in-group/out-group bias, or giving preferential treatment to people we feel belong to a group we identify with. Clearly, this inhibits the creation of diverse teams, especially when we believe that our capacities are greater than those of other people – an idea fueled by experience bias – or that people are not similar to us – affinity bias.
On previous occasions, we have discussed how the possibility of remote work represents an opportunity for people with a disability, since it makes the workplace more accessible. In this respect, in our recent study entitled Hybrid workspaces: leadership and team management, we made reference to proximity bias, understood as “the tendency to favor people who are in our immediate vicinity”; applied to the hybrid model, this bias “entails showing preferential treatment towards those who are physically present in the office, behavior which is more often than not unconscious.”
Proximity bias reflects the belief that we are more productive in the office, an idea which remote work and the hybrid model have demonstrated to be untrue. This bias affects decision-making on the evaluation of work, performance and possible promotions. If we are not vigilant about this, people who work remotely will be at a disadvantage when seeking to demonstrate their worth and, as a result, they will have access to fewer opportunities.
A persistent discrimination
The problem in the field of functional diversity is that, according to research by Tessa Charlesworth, unconscious biases can change, but this has only occurred with respect to other groups. Thus, for example, sexual prejudice dropped 64% in 14 years, but with relation to disability, biases have only shifted by 5% over the same period, so there is a massive disparity between the change in sexuality bias and the persistent stability in disability bias.
Unconscious biases can change, but they are especially persistent with regard to disability
In reality, where the greatest shifts are being seen is in explicit biases, particularly those about disabilities, which have dropped 37%. According to this researcher, based on the rate of past movement of unconscious disability biases, it will likely take more than 150 years for implicit disability biases to reach neutrality.
Recognition of one's own biases
In order to combat biases, given that they are filters used by our brain to select the most relevant information, the first step is to gain awareness of their existence. Hence the importance of conducting training sessions on unconscious biases, and the good news here is that they are already high on the agenda of many organizations. In a detailed article about training programs to address biases, Kim and Roberson note that raising individual self-awareness is the first critical step. Only after taking this step will it be possible to identify biases in context and analyze existing stereotypes.
A meta-analytical integration of over 40 years of research on diversity training found that, in order to be effective, it must be complemented by other diversity initiatives, targeted to both awareness and skills development, and conducted over a significant period of time.
The first step towards overcoming one's own biases is to become aware of their existence
Other measures consist in contacting other groups with opposing beliefs, rather than allowing them to form their own self-confirming circles, or creating so-called affinity groups, people within the company with a common purpose who voluntarily meet in order to exchange experiences and promote specific initiatives aimed at achieving diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
90% of Fortune 500 companies have these affinity groups, and many companies in Spain — some of which were interviewed in this study — also use similar dynamics, such as diversity circles or conversations about diversity in the case of Capgemini, or talent communities in Línea Directa.
Blind hiring
A recent article in the HBR focuses on the hiring process, which is vital to affording access to people with functional diversity. Inspired by the results of a famous orchestra study, where symphony orchestras began hiring more women through “blind” auditions, some organizations now use this type of “blind hiring” to help achieve goals related to diversity.
This involves removing information in the hiring process which may identify a specific group. A recent survey of over 800 U.S.-based HR practitioners indicated that about 20% worked for organizations that used blind hiring and about 60% were familiar with it
Finally, given the growing influence of artificial intelligence, validating algorithms as soon as they are created will ensure that unconscious biases are not introduced into AI systems.