Equality and Diversity, and Implicit Bias

CiC are big on Equality and Diversity. Recently, we have facilitated some training to Oracle Corporation on E & D in the workplace, are actively collaborating with police procurement teams regarding E & D and are now delivering training on Implicit Bias as well as having our own internal discussion on the matter.

What?

Implicit Bias is the understanding that we all have blind spots – or as Project Implicit puts it.”

It is well known that people don’t always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’ . Implicit bias occurs when people unconsciously favour others who look like them and/or share their values. For example a person may be drawn to someone with a similar educational background, from the same area, or who is the same ethnicity as them.

Because Implicit Bias in unseen, researchers are studying ways in which to remove it from the workplace. The ways in which to do this, are to remove demographic characteristics when reviewing CV’ s, having men attend harassment training, training to overcome assumptions on who might succeed in a job, and who may not.

Why?

In June, Lord Sugar was forced to take part in an unconscious bias programme after causing outrage from uploading a picture of the Senegal World Cup team edited to include handbags and sunglasses laid on sheets, captioned: “I recognise some of these guys from the beach in Marbella.”

With Implicit Bias being in the forefront of the news, CiC created an internal group to project manage how to take the conversation further with CiC, and discuss Implicit Bias in the workplace. As a result of this, the group have ran a session on Implicit Bias in the Workplace and will continue to develop the conversation.

CiC have also had its own internal Equality and Inclusion project group for almost 2 years, which contains four individuals from each department of CiC.

So, how do we address this?

Our internal group ran a session on Implicit Bias in the workplace which sparked a conversation on our own experiences of it, noticing signs of it in ourselves and how we can try to prevent it from happening in the workplace. Discussions were insightful and needed and it was felt that conversations such as these should happen more often. The attendees were asked to take a test on implicit bias. If you’ re interested, please find more information on the Project Implicit website.

CiC can provide advice and support on the matter, provide facilitation and deliver training and conflict management.

For further information please contact us assist@cic-eap.co.uk or call us on 020 7938 0992