Cultural biases occur when an individual associates a particular attribute or action with a group of people based on their own cultural background and oftentimes based on the norms of a majority group, whether that be based on gender, race, or age, among others. These assumptions often form subconsciously and begin to form as individuals encounter cultures throughout life that are unlike their own.
For employers, cultural biases can impact a range of processes, but can have a particularly negative effect on hiring. Oftentimes, employers evaluate candidates based on their “culture fit,” but using this as a qualification or measure can quickly become a slippery slope for those trying to avoid perpetuating bias, because it reinforces homogeneity.
Reed Development Group, a Philadelphia-based, multi-disciplined Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) solutions firm helps regional, national, and global employers reveal and overcome bias in their hiring practices by walking them through the following steps.
Understand when cultural biases become barriers.
Reed Development advises their clients that cultural biases are a result of each individual’s upbringing, including where they have grown up, the social structures of which they have been a part, the types of media they have internalized, and the list goes on.
These biases become barriers when they are brought into the workplace and applied to colleagues, potential candidates, and clients. There are biases with negative connotations, like attributing aggressive personalities to a group of people, which present an obvious obstacle to getting hired. Biases with seemingly positive connotations can be just as harmful — for example, assuming a group of people is docile or agreeable can breed resentment when someone from that group is actually opinionated or outspoken.
Identify where the barriers come into play by auditing your processes and overcome them by standardizing your practices.
Rather than organizing another training session with your hiring managers or human resources staff, consultants at Reed Development stress first building awareness around hiring biases, followed by intentional processes to eliminate them in your recruitment, interview, and selection assessments:
Do an audit. They can serve as educational tools to help employers rethink their job descriptions, performance review criteria, behavioral competency models, and talent management and succession plans.
Standardize your hiring processes. Interview questions for candidates and post-interview debrief questions answered by your staff should be the same for all prospective hires.
Expand your hiring team. You don’t need to have 10 people on staff sitting in on an interview; however, making an effort to have multiple staff members of diverse backgrounds — including race, ethnicity, age, and gender — and staff members that will have minimal or no connection to the new hire ensures the focus is kept on the performance and talent of the candidate and not how well you socialize with them. Including staff members that bring a wide range of cultural backgrounds significantly diminishes the potential for cultural bias.
Build relationships with communities that can provide outside input.
As you begin to address the cultural and hiring biases that impact your organization and staff, it is important to set actionable goals to build relationships with individuals from underrepresented communities.
For example, to support Black professionals, employers can start by identifying Historically Black Colleges and Universities to connect with recent graduates and alumni that align with currently available roles. There are two in Greater Philadelphia: Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.
Where your organization advertises your open roles can make all the difference, as well. To start, there are a vast number of industry-specific organizations and associations that support women professionals.
Building and sustaining these relationships and pipelines can help combat monolothic thinking about groups of people, exposing hiring teams to the personal differences that belong to individuals of the same group.
Ultimately, addressing cultural biases in your hiring practice will lead to more diverse teams that can help overcome issues of bias in all corners of your organization’s talent management strategies.
Last year, the Chamber and leaders across the region made a commitment to equity, pledging to identify areas for change to hold ourselves accountable to a high standard of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our workplaces and throughout the region.
As the Chamber continues our longstanding commitment to the fight for equality, we’re highlighting ways our business community can implement new strategies to meaningfully increase diversity, equity, and inclusion to bring about lasting change in the workplace. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative drives economic competitiveness, highlights diverse employee populations, and promotes inclusive growth throughout our region.
