Inclusive Employers Inclusion Round-Up | August
Our Head of Inclusion and Diversity Services (South), Addison Barnett, writes our first expert inclusion round-up for August.
Continue reading to learn more Addison's thoughts about inclusion and diversity news this month.
Welcome to the Inclusion Round-Up for August. In this round up I’ll be focusing on sport, bias and performance.
Inclusion and sport
It’s been a sport-packed summer. England’s Lionesses won the Euros and the Commonwealth games took place in Birmingham with eight para-sport events (the most in Commonwealth Games history) taking place alongside non-para sports.
As I write this round-up Serena Williams, winner of 23 grand slams including the Australian Open while pregnant with her daughter, has announced her retirement from tennis.
It’s not a decision she’s made lightly, and as she points out, her male peers would not have to balance their careers as an athlete, family and health the way she has:
“If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family.”
Bias in recruitment and performance reviews
One of the challenges of being human is that we are unreliable assessors of performance, especially when we don’t consider ourselves to be.
As Inclusion and Diversity professionals we need to build inclusion into our processes to mitigate these biases, as well as upskilling our colleagues in how to identify, unlearn and navigate their own cognitive biases at work.
Cognitive biases affect our judgements, especially in pressured situations. One of the main arenas in which this can affect work is recruitment and performance reviews.
These biases often play out along existing patterns of discrimination, for instance around race, gender, disability or accent:
“Respondents in northern cities were particularly prone to ‘accent anxiety’, with 17% of those surveyed in Liverpool expressing concern over how their accents were impacting their hireability”
A recent Harvard Business Review article shares some tips for making the performance review process fairer: train managers in how to assess, and contextualise the employee and build in bias mitigation to the process for employees and managers.
You could also have a look at our tips for managing unconscious bias and our inclusive recruitment resources, as well as explore our Accredited Inclusive Recruitment offer.
Building self-awareness
I’ve been reading Carol Sanford’s No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work this month. I’m finding it an interesting and at times quite challenging read. Sanford’s central argument is that feedback from others assumes other people are objective and fair in their assessment of us when we know people generally are neither objective nor unbiased.
She argues that we should instead cultivate self-awareness in our people and empower our staff to lead their own development, for only then can we make sustainable long-term performance happen.
Closing thoughts
As I close this month’s round-up, some food for thought: in a 2019 YouGov poll one in eight men thought they could win a point in a game of tennis against Serena Williams who has won 23 grand slams and is considered one of the best tennis players of all time.
Some proof, if it is needed, that the narrower our perspective and the less self-awareness we have, the more likely we are to assess ourselves inaccurately.
If you need expert inclusion insight, we’re ready to help. If you’re a member, contact your account manager. If you’re not yet a member, contact us here.