Going Beyond Diversity in the Workplace: The Importance of Inclusion and Overcoming Unconscious Bias

Does your workplace embrace diverse opinions, preferences and perspectives? Do your front-line supervisors recognize the importance of inclusion in their day-to-day employee management practices?

And are you aware of how unconscious bias can affect everything from hiring the best candidates to fostering effective collaboration to making fair and legal termination decisions?

According to a recent Glassdoor survey, more than 60 percent of U.S. employees have witnessed or experienced workplace discrimination based on age, race, gender or LGBTQ identity. Clearly, more can be done – and needs to be done – to stop this behavior.While preventing illegal discrimination is essential, it’s only a first step. To realize the many benefits of diversity in the workplace, employers must proactively foster inclusion and help employees overcome unconscious bias.

Defining Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

Diversity in the workplace involves employing a wide range of people with significantly different backgrounds, experiences, characteristics and perspectives. 

The individual differences that contribute to diversity include those that are legally protected against discrimination under federal, state and local laws – such as age, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, gender and sexual orientation. But the characteristics that contribute to a meaningfully diverse workplace go far beyond what’s legally protected, to include factors such as education levels, languages spoken, marital and family status, and even individual personality traits.

What about inclusion?

Inclusion is the act of deliberately engaging employees from under-represented groups to make sure their opinions and perspectives are heard and considered. Creating a truly inclusive workplace requires genuine acceptance of people’s differences, openness to engaging with coworkers unlike ourselves, and a conscious effort to ensure every employee is treated with respect.

The Role of Unconscious Bias in Creating an Inclusive Workplace

In any discussion about diversity and inclusion, it’s important to consider the impact of unconscious bias.

Unconscious bias is the tendency to make quick judgments or assessments about other people without realizing we’re doing it. We all develop unconscious biases toward other people based on social norms and stereotypes, on information we learn over time, and on personal life experiences. The automatic judgments we make based on these biases can happen so quickly, that we aren’t even aware of them — but the fact is, they can affect our reactions and our behavior in ways that we don’t intend.

There are many types of unconscious bias that can arise in the workplace. For example:

• Gender bias – The tendency to think positively or negatively about an individual based on gender.
• Affinity bias – The tendency to think more positively of people who are similar to us in some way, from age and race to the religion we practice or the political party we support.
• Cultural bias – The tendency to judge others through a narrow view of our own culture.
• Beauty bias – The tendency to think positively or negatively about an individual based on their attractiveness.
• Contrast bias – The tendency to judge someone by comparing them to someone else (such as an interviewer judging a candidate more harshly after a particularly strong interview with a previous candidate).
• Proximity bias – The tendency to favor someone with whom you interact often (such as an onsite employee) over someone you rarely see (such as a remote employee).

At its worst, unconscious bias can lead to illegal discrimination. For example, a hiring manager may pass up a candidate with an ethnic-sounding name or dismiss an older job candidate because they don’t “fit the culture.”

Even when it doesn’t result in discrimination, unconscious bias can get in the way of effective collaboration and lead to high turnover of employees who do not feel like part of the team.

Tactics to Strengthen Diversity and Inclusion

While it’s obvious that discrimination has no place in any organization, it’s also true that building a deeply diverse, inclusive workplace offers many benefits. Studies consistently show that employers who make deliberate efforts to hire and engage many different types of employees benefit from: 

• More creativity and innovation
• Better, faster decision-making
• Happier, more productive employees
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Better financial performance

So, what can you do to protect your organization from discriminatory practices and shift toward greater diversity and inclusion? Here are a few key tactics:

• Train employees and managers on what constitutes harassment and discrimination under the law — Whether or not harassment training is mandatory in your state, make sure every employee is aware of the various types of workplace harassment, and what to do if they experience or witness it happening. As part of your training, go over your anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and explain your formal reporting procedures. Managers should receive additional training to understand their role in preventing discrimination when hiring, promoting and disciplining employees, and their responsibility to report harassing behavior and avoid retaliation.

• Examine and revise hiring practices — Make sure your job postings are carefully worded to avoid any chance of discriminatory language, and use an attorney-approved job application that complies with all federal, state and local hiring laws. Be sure your interview process follows an approved list of questions to keep the conversation job-focused and legally sound. And remember the mention of “cultural fit” earlier? When interviewing job candidates, don’t immediately gravitate toward someone who looks and acts like everyone else on the team, which can limit diversity. Instead, concentrate on the candidate’s strengths and how they can contribute to your company’s overall success.

Consider auditing all internal processes to identify and correct systemic biases. In addition to job descriptions and screening practices, review your pay, promotion and discipline policies.

• Reinforce inclusivity in day-to-day operations — This can happen a few different ways, such as inviting all employees to share their opinions in meetings, creating teams comprised of individuals with varying backgrounds, introducing mentorship programs that allow employees to promote their strengths to others and facilitating virtual team-building activities to include remote workers.

• Address unconscious biases through training… and by example — Awareness is a critical step in overcoming biases, which can be automatic and deeply ingrained. Challenge employees to recognize and acknowledge their own biases by implementing diversity training that tackles this topic directly and teaches employees how to overcome their inherent biases. You can also “lead by example” by committing to speak up against any insensitive or derogatory remarks or behavior you encounter in the workplace.

New Training Is Designed to Help Employees Overcome Biases

To create a more inclusive workplace – and help employees embrace diversity – it’s vital to prioritize training that covers unconscious bias. Diversity & Inclusion at Work: Unconscious Bias Training for Employees is a new, expertly designed training program designed to help employees understand the value of diversity, the importance of respecting differences, and the specific actions they can take to create a more inclusive workplace.

Going far beyond basic definitions and concepts, this self-paced program uses relatable examples, thought-provoking exercises and interactive quizzes to spark personal insights about unconscious biases and illustrate simple but effective steps for overcoming them. Use it to engage employees in a meaningful way to support your diversity and inclusion efforts.