Unconscious Bias Training: An Overview

Unconscious bias training helps companies eradicate biases in the workplace. These unconscious biases are subconsciously owned beliefs, assumptions, or attitudes. They exist in every individual, and people use them as cognitive shortcuts for faster information processing.

In addition, unconscious prejudices impact a person's beliefs and influence how companies hire and interact with coworkers. However, even when these prejudices are prevalent, you can mitigate them with purposeful effort and attention. Being mindful and understanding the different forms of unconscious biases that exist will assist you in recognizing and fighting them.

Benefits of unconscious bias training in a workplace 

While recognizing the need for unconscious bias training can be an admittedly challenging or uncomfortable measure, it is essential for long-term business health. Some companies might own sufficient uncertainties about their capability to execute unconscious bias training, missing out on an opportunity to serve and know their future clients and workforce better. Implicit or unconscious biases are the assumptions or stereotypes about a particular group of individuals that a person might unconsciously hold or act upon in an organization.

This phenomenon can pervade all departments in a company, including performance assessments, marketing materials, retention, and recruitment. For instance, do your managers unconsciously deliver mentorship to only people who look like them? An efficient unconscious bias training can drive the needle from compliance to understanding and ultimately toward maturity and administration within a business's respective domain. 

In addition, investing in proactive implicit bias training can reduce the risk of a potential suit down the lane. A perfect example of this can be Google who recently paid $11 million to resolve an age-based bias suit and must institute implicit bias training moving forward. So we can say that avoiding complicated and expensive litigation can be the most significant grounds for enforcing unconscious bias training. 

By addressing this problem deliberately, empowered employees acquire the conviction to speak up and question workplace discrimination because they know that managers can take their concerns seriously. Furthermore, employees who feel a sense of belongingness in their workplace will accomplish higher productivity. Companies have a better opportunity of retaining talented employees who drive innovation.

How to improve your unconscious bias training?

While every company needs to have proper unconscious training, poorly planned training can appear out of touch and do more damage than good. Below are some steps to improve your unconscious bias training to make it more effective for your organization.

• Prioritize awareness

An efficient unconscious bias training delivers actionable measures to assist learners in addressing their prejudices, but it shouldn't begin there. Instead, it is better to start your implicit bias training with the "what" and the "why". For instance, you must understand what unconscious biases are and why it is important to overcome them. Implicit prejudices arise from a combination of elements unique to every person, their culture, experiences, childhood, cultural values, etc.

Explain how these elements add to implicit biases, and the attendees will begin to assess their own lives and determine causes for their prejudices. The "why" is equally significant. Be straightforward and unpretentious about the adverse effects of unconscious bias in the organization and the world. Present explicit instances that show the consequences of implicit prejudice, both on a wide scale and on a personal, human level. 

However, note that you must not focus your unconscious bias training only on the negativity surrounding it. You must likewise emphasize how advantageous it is to have a bias-free workplace. Furthermore, when your learners remain emotionally invested in solving a problem, they will remain more committed to your unconscious bias training program.

• Structure your unconscious bias training over an extended time

People spent most of their lives working under and growing diverse prejudices without recognizing them. Therefore, your employees cannot comprehend and overcome such profoundly rooted psychological traits throughout a single bias training session. 

So it is better to structure your bias prevention training into brief, frequent sessions rather than presenting a one-and-done session. Numerous training sessions facilitate the time and recurrence needed to enact noteworthy changes.

• Choose the right facilitator to conduct your unconscious bias training

The success of your unconscious bias training relies principally on the individual conducting the training. Most significantly, the facilitator must remain highly competent and expert in a wide range of workplace prejudice problems. 

They must remain proficient in conveying the psychology behind unconscious bias and how it correlates to everyday workplace circumstances. In addition, it is also crucial to pick someone who aligns with your overall company culture. 

• Present actions to handle unconscious bias

Once your training has assisted your workforce in recognizing their prejudices, then what? What can they do to fight prejudices they're not deliberately exhibiting? So if you cannot answer that question, your unconscious bias training lacks actionable insight.

Therefore, it is better to employ detailed and practical examples to discuss the measures your employees can take after bias training to overcome such issues. Offer numerous hypothetical situations where unconscious bias impacts an employee's decision-making or actions.

These circumstances may relate to an employment decision, a routine discussion, or even a lunchtime communication. In every situation, exemplify what the hypothetical worker could have done to reduce the impacts of their prejudice. Your employees will relate to these instances without feeling like they are getting blamed.

• Continue the conversation

It requires time to learn new things, and it is true for your unconscious bias training. So it takes time to unlearn detrimental conducts or opinions. It needs training and intentional effort to uphold behavior change. In addition, to adhere to the implicit bias training, the communication must continue. Schedule recurring brief conversation groups after the initial session to unpack, outline, and strengthen the learning. Consider delivering extra training that builds on the understanding they just earned.

• Individualize the bias prevention strategies 

As no two companies are the same, every unconscious bias training should remain customized to a business's values and objectives. Without understanding how to tailor your training content as per the requirements, language, and company culture, out-of-the-box bias prevention training might not remain practical.

By destigmatizing the existence and prevalence of implicit bias, individuals are more inclined to accept their blind spots and determine the behaviors they want to address. In addition, for any change to happen, people need to remain comfortable enough to accept any past imperfections. By asking everyone to note down one specific bias they plan to concentrate on, the scale of transformation becomes more sensible and manageable. 

Hence, you need to understand that a mere list of rules from top-level management is not enough to address the unconscious bias issue. Some of the primary elements of a persuasive implicit bias training session include informing participants about the problem, holding open and spirited discussions, leading engagement activities, and completing the session with a plan of action. 

Bidirectional and interactive training boosts retention alongside other follow-up materials and educational content. Furthermore, as it takes time for habits to develop, mechanisms like frequent engagement emails can strengthen training learnings and carry out the discussion every day.

The bottom line 

In a nutshell, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for practical unconscious bias training. Therefore, you must never adopt bias training merely because other organizations adopted it. Furthermore, for valuable implicit bias training, you need to take feedback after every session and continue to modify your training curriculum over time. So with the correct technique, your unconscious bias training will add to a more diverse and bias-free workplace culture.