Workplace Diversity: Reducing Hiring Bias and Improving Inclusion
The content explains that diversity hiring aims to create a workforce reflecting societal demographics by recruiting underrepresented groups and highlights six common cognitive hiring biases—halo effect, expectation bias, confirmation bias, anchoring bias, social comparison bias, and ingroup bias—that organizations must identify and eliminate to reduce hiring bias and improve workplace inclusion.
What is Diversity Hiring?
Diversity hiring refers to the practice of organizations recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups. Workplace diversity means a staff demographic makeup that includes members of underrepresented groups in proportions similar to society at large. For example, if the general population is 20% Black, 52% female, and 15% Latino, an organization’s workforce would reflect similar demographics.
Hiring bias prevents organizations from achieving workforce diversity. Companies committed to diversity identify and eliminate biases in their hiring process.
Get Rid of Hiring Bias – 6 Most Common Types
These are categorized as cognitive biases, which are flaws in judgment.
1. The Halo Effect
First impressions matter and are related to the halo effect. Once we have a positive opinion of someone, it can be difficult to change our mind. The halo effect refers to the phenomenon where a person’s positive qualities are perceived to extend beyond their actual accomplishments.
2. Expectation Bias
A recruiter might form an impression based on a candidate’s qualifications without meeting them, leading to an exaggerated sense of their abilities due to a positive first impression. This can cause the recruiter to overlook obvious flaws.
3. Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that validates one’s own opinion. In hiring, it means focusing only on aspects of a candidate that coincide with pre-established opinions.
4. Anchoring Bias
Anchoring occurs when a hiring manager fixates on one piece of information and gives it more weight than it deserves.
5. Social Comparison Bias
Managers hiring for their own team may dislike or feel competitive with others who have similar skills.
6. Ingroup Bias
Ingroup bias is the tendency to favor people who are similar to oneself, leading to favoritism based on group membership. This can manifest as biases against women or minorities, or more subtle examples like favoring fellow alumni.
Awareness of these unconscious biases is crucial, as they can negatively impact the hiring process. An applicant tracking system (ATS) can help reduce bias by hiding aspects of a candidate’s profile, managing gender- and ethnically-neutral job descriptions, and centralizing notes and diversity metrics.
Improving Your Organization’s Diversity – An 8 Step Program
After identifying hiring biases, create an action plan to reduce and eliminate them.
1. Set Goals that can be Measured
Examine your company’s current demographics and create short- and long-term goals to achieve parity.
2. Incorporate Employee Resource Groups
Use employee resource groups (ERGs) during interviews to make diverse candidates feel more comfortable. If you don’t have ERGs, encourage staff to create and support them.
3. Blind Resume Assessment
Studies show that resumes with white-sounding names receive more callbacks than those with non-white names. Use an ATS to remove names and hide demographic information.
4. Diversify Your Hiring Team
Ensure your hiring team represents the diversity of your applicant pool. The makeup of the interview team can influence a candidate’s decision.
5. Train Employees on Hiring Bias
Employees must be aware of unconscious bias and its negative effects. Create internal training, hire a consultant, or use online resources like Google’s unconscious bias training.
6. How to Write Compelling Job Ads with the Right Requirements
Ensure job descriptions are free of gender-specific language. Use the job title instead of pronouns. Review job requirements and remove subjective criteria like 'corporate culture match,' which can allow unconscious bias.
7. Use Structured Interviewing
Rewrite interview scripts to remove bias and train interviewers to use them correctly, following EEOC guidelines. Manage scripts in your ATS.
8. Ask Employees for Diverse Referrals
Encourage employees to refer qualified applicants from underrepresented groups through your employee referral program.
See also
- Discrimination
- Workplace Diversity
Additional resources
- 50+ Ideas for Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion at Your Company, LinkedIn
- Creating a Diversity and Inclusion Training Program, Business News Daily
- Root Out These 7 Insidious Hiring Biases to Increase Workforce Diversity
- Do You Want To Increase Workforce Diversity? 13 Top Tips For Diversity Hiring
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