Listen, Fairness in Hiring Decisions Makes a Difference

In previous posts I’ve written about how neutral hiring processes, particularly in selection instruments, can create more diverse workforces without negatively impacting performance.  The symphonic music industry has adapted this approach by having blind auditions (those applying for performance jobs play their audition pieces from behind a screen and without shoes).  I am sure they have done other things to promote diversity in the applicant pool as well.  This article reports that the New York Philharmonic has achieved overall gender parity.  This is not to say that unequal pay issues have gone away, but it does represent a milestone.  And I don’t think anyone is cancelling subscriptions because of it.

There are so many straight forward ways to ensure that your selection process is neutral and identifies the candidates who are most likely to be successful, including:

  • Check to see if your job postings are gender and race neutral.
  • Remove names and other gender/race information from resumes before they are evaluated.
  • Check each step or your recruiting and selection processes for adverse impact. Don’t put your head in the sand!  You cannot tell if you are reducing adverse impact unless you track it.
  • Conduct a validation analysis of each step of your process. Check to ensure that your (human or AI) processes for evaluating resumes, assessments, and interviews are predictive of performance.

Unbiased and valid approaches to hiring go hand-in-hand.  The symphony industry has moved from some orchestras not letting women to even audition to the best known one in the US having an unbiased process without a lowering of quality.  If they can do it, so can you.

Removing Unnecessary Employment Barriers

Let’s play some DE&I trivia!  As many of you know, the landmark case in employment discrimination is Griggs v. Duke Power.  But, what was the aspect of Duke Power’s hiring that got them into court?

If you said their use of pre-employment tests, you’d only be partially right.  The decision was also based on the use of discriminatory educational requirements (in this instance, a high school diploma).  Interestingly, after that tests got a bad name, but companies continued to use school credentials with little or no problem.

As the US economy and culture pushed more and more students towards college, racial disparities in educational attainment have persisted.  Yet, companies rarely questioned whether asking for high school or college degrees for certain jobs really gets them better candidates.  In some cases, this requirement is a classic “like me” bias?

Of course, the only way to see if a high school or college degree is necessary for a job is to conduct a job analysis and compare that knowledge, skills, and abilities with a high school or college curriculum.  Yes, I want my surgeon to have an MD, thank you very much. Far too often companies have used degrees as a de facto job requirement without ever thinking about its impact on organizational performance (are we turning away qualified people?) or fairness.  This is particularly true in IT where there are many self-taught people in the field.

Due to a confluence of factors, some big companies have rethought their use of degrees as qualifications.  Besides this leading to potentially more diverse hiring, it will also save them money (but be an economic boom to the new hires).  Whether it would lead to less college enrollment and lower higher education costs is certainly possible.  More importantly, it would lead to a paradigm shift of associating all white collar jobs with college degrees.

One can argue that getting a college degree shows tenacity and commitment over a long period of time.  And I would agree.  But, there are other ways to show this as well.

Change only comes when we do things in a different way.  And solutions to long term problems often require big actions.  Removing high school or college degrees as job qualifications when they are unnecessary removes a significant barrier to employment for racial minorities that could have an impact at your company.

Changing Behaviors, Not Just Attitudes

Events of 2020 accelerated companies’ interest in all things around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I).  This has brought out a lot of “experts” in the field and a multitude of unconscious bias training (UBT) programs to address the problem of discrimination in the workplace.

The idea behind UBT is that a change in an attitude (bias) will lead to a change in how people act (prejudice) so that they will show behaviors that promote DE&I. This is very different from typical development programs which focus directly on behaviors. And, while it is fair to say that our understanding of the effectiveness DE&I programs is at an early stage, there has been research done which is fairly sobering on the topic.

This report outlines what seems to be effective in the DE&I training space.  The relevant key findings are (emphasis added):

  • UBT is effective for awareness raising by using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) (followed by a debrief) or more advanced training designs such as interactive workshops.
  • UBT can be effective for reducing implicit bias, but it is unlikely to eliminate it.
  • UBT interventions are not generally designed to reduce explicit bias and those that do aim to do so have yielded mixed results.
  • Using an IAT and educating participants on unconscious bias theory is likely to increase awareness of and reduce implicit bias.
  • The evidence for UBT’s ability effectively to change behavior is limited. Most of the evidence reviewed did not use valid measures of behavior change.

I emphasized that last bullet because I believe that is where we need to focus.  If behaviors do not change then we cannot achieve DE&I.  Organizations should not spend money on DE&I programs (UBTs or otherwise) that do not show these changes.

The report hedges a bit in noting that valid measures of behavior were not used in the research studies.  Rightly, this puts the onus on organizations to define the actions that need to be changed.  For instance, use of appropriate language, giving others the opportunity to share ideas, etc.  Note that these are different from organizational goals (e.g., representation in management positions), which should be measured, which are outcomes of D&EI behaviors.

Once the behaviors are defined, then a method for evaluating them needs to be implemented.  A 360 feedback instrument is likely to be effective for interpersonal behaviors.  When well designed, these encourage raters to evaluate what they observe in others rather than giving opinions.  This provides the opportunity for those being rated to be given meaningful feedback and gives those responsible for designing UBT programs information on areas that still need more work.  How to provide this feedback is a topic for another post.

There can be objective individual measures as well.  For instance, the diversity of a person’s LinkedIn connections or hires/promotions that she/he/they was involved with.

We should always remember that any organizational change begins with people acting differently.  The important starting point in a successful DE&I initiative is understanding what are the behaviors that you want to impact.  That will be more effective in designing meaningful programs than hoping that insights from an IAT will be sufficient.

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