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How to Deal With Unconscious Bias at Work

The need for workplace inclusion and diversity is vital, and it is gaining traction. Organizations continue to employ individuals with various skills from all over the world in order to enrich their workplaces with diverse cultures, values, and beliefs. However, as important as accepting people with different ideas is, it is undeniably a challenging task to create a welcoming environment in which people from diverse backgrounds may feel as at ease with the job as the rest of the team. Aside from how difficult it is for enterprises to accommodate these rather various cultures, it is also critical to consider what people confront when they need to adjust to a new place due to their diverse interests. Although corporations are continually taking initiatives to improve workplace culture, it ultimately comes down to regulating conscious prejudice while unconscious bias goes unnoticed. As a result, in this audio episode on the Workplace Perspective channel, Stacy A. Gordon proposes a few useful strategies that employees may adopt to address unconscious bias at work.

Dealing with unconscious bias at work

Stacy suggests addressing the diversity wheel, to begin with the topic of the conversation. She believes it is critical for us to recognize that diversity does not simply come from various religions or ethnicities; differences in socioeconomic status, education, and training may also be crucial in leveraging diversity in the workplace. People perceive prejudice, in her perspective, as discrimination caused by things that persons can physically see in one another. She does, however, propose that there are a few more elements to variety. According to Stacy, while people prefer to avoid the prejudice that appears conscious, it is difficult for unconscious bias to be even noticed. Stacy advocates raising awareness as the first step in dealing with unconscious bias in the workplace. She claims that it is practically every organization’s most prevalent perspective to be unaware that the firm’s processes may need to be improved. As a result, in order to solve the issue of unconscious bias, organizations must raise awareness to the point that even things that might hurt someone in the name of fun can be repaired. Second, she proposes that supervisors in companies from all domains be brought together to establish the agenda or plan for implementing various techniques to build a healthy work environment. Finally, she says that if it is clear that the business has to establish measures to eliminate the blockages of prejudice, rapid action is required. Making their employees sit and discuss how they feel about the workplace culture and what they would want to see altered is one of the most beneficial things a company can do.

Organizations are so focused on removing bias based on someone’s physical characteristics that they fail to notice if unconscious bias is there. The above are a few tips for dealing with a scenario if you find yourself in one.

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