Tuesday 8 March 2022 is International Women’s Day. This annual event celebrates women’s achievements across the globe in all walks of life but is also an important opportunity to raise awareness of the many challenges facing women daily.

International Women’s Day campaign theme for this year is #BreakTheBias, with the worthy intention to create a gender equal world that is free from bias, stereotypes, and discrimination, a world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive, and a world where difference is valued and celebrated.  Sign me up!

The reality is that a key barrier to women achieving gender equality in the workplace is the prevalence of ‘unconscious bias’ rather than overt intentional bias. Unconscious bias is when a person, or people, who work within a company form a biased opinion about a situation or individual without necessarily being aware of it. For example, a person may instantly make a judgment about someone due to their appearance, or their commitment to the job because of family commitments, which can therefore impact upon their opinion of this individual overall.

Unconscious bias in a workplace context can affect who is attracted to a job, recruited, who is promoted and who receives certain opportunities at work. Whilst most companies will have equality, diversity and inclusion policies in place, they may not take into account a subconscious bias of this nature.

Providing training for all, and tackling unconscious bias is one way organisations can take steps to ‘break the bias’ on International Women’s Day and beyond. HR Optimisation recommends that Companies should consider raising awareness of unconscious bias in the workplace, including gender bias, and review what measures they have in place to prevent this, such as providing unconscious bias training for managers – this could be followed up with break the bias debriefs to ensure training learning translates into action.

Changes to the recruitment process that can reduce the risk of unconscious bias and gender inequality include second reviewing all job adverts to ensure they eliminate bias (e.g. gendered words etc); implementing blind recruitment so that personal characteristics are removed from CVs and application forms; ensuring a diverse group of decision makers are involved in the recruitment process where possible; and omitting personal interview questions which could unconsciously influence the outcome. Utilising a skills-based approach to recruitment rather than focusing on CVs can also reduce the risk of gender bias and help females to overcome barriers to accessing senior roles.

You can also seek to ‘break the bias’ by introducing transparent pay structures with clear objectives, where employees are rewarded on merit. Pay transparency is recognised as one of the actions which can help to tackle the gender pay gap, allowing employees to understand what they have to do to achieve a pay rise, rather than awarding pay rises to those, for example, who have greater lengths of uninterrupted service or who have the confidence to ask for a pay rise.  You can find out more about pay equality in our article here.

Taking action against inequality, raising awareness of bias and celebrating achievement are all ways we recommend that businesses can support International Women’s Day this week, and every day thereafter.

If you would like help with your DEI strategy or embedding bias free processes please reach out on hello@HROptimisation.co.uk

 

 

 

Hannah Powell