Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How to Spot the 5 Subtle Forms of Workplace Bias

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a tall, white man.

While I am Caucasian, I’m not tall or male. And because depending on who you ask, between 70-80 percent of leaders have all three attributes, I’m wondering just how much my lack of two of them has held me back.

When I talked, off the record, to a gender bias researcher at a prestigious U.S. university, she informed me that I should not take my success for granted. Apparently, being a short woman in Corporate America means I must be twice as smart, twice as competent, and twice as hardworking.

Most clients wouldn’t tell me that outright as they don’t understand it to be true. It’s not like people readily believe that tall, white men naturally make better leaders. And that’s the thing about unconscious bias – it’s an automatic attitude or perception about a person based on a single attribute like gender, ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation that we are unaware we have and act upon. Unconscious bias is almost as old as humans, as our ancestors developed it to quickly categorize threats in a hostile environment.

In other words, we don’t mean to discriminate, but we can’t help it.

The good news is, we’re getting better at spotting subtle bias at work, as well as the business process improvement techniques and strategies that can root it out before it does too much damage to your culture. Let’s examine a few places bias at work will commonly show up, now or in the near future.

Resume Filters

We often don’t realize it, but we don’t review resumes and profiles on merit alone. When unconscious bias creeps in, we can negatively assess a candidate based on their name, photo, or educational institution. Therefore, using software to blind your applicants’ resumes, profiles, and sample interview tasks is the first element of your first business improvement plan. Full candidate details should not be revealed until your recruiters or hiring managers have had an opportunity to get to know them as an individual.

Unstructured Interviews

Unstructured interviews are not a solid predictor of employee performance for many reasons, but one is surely the subtle bias that results. When we chat informally with candidates, the conversation may proceed in a direction that takes away from the candidate’s relevant attributes. Your business process improvement plan should combat selection bias by including a new interview approach that asks every candidate the same questions, in the same order, according to the same evaluation criteria. You might also consider using a video-based chatbot assessment of interviewer speech and body language to check for potential bias there.

Female Notetakers

Do you have a meeting methodology in place? If so, use business process improvement methodology to mitigate the effects of unconscious bias. Recognize that in meetings, women tend to be asked to take notes more often than men and are more frequently the victims of crosstalk and credit stealing (men may speak over them or coop their ideas). Leaders must make a concerted effort to ensure that female participant contributions are respected and acknowledged equally, and this may be involve changing the way your meetings are structured.

Questionable Writing

Business communication is becoming more informal, and from a subtle bias perspective, that makes it increasingly dangerous because we are more prone to be lazy about what we say and how we say it. Thankfully, artificial intelligence can help you make business process improvements here. Certain document creation software, for instance, provides guidance 

on potentially sensitive or offensive language (i.e. “May the best man win”) contained in a presentation, and others scans text for inappropriately gendered pronouns as part of a general grammar check.

Homogeneous Teams

When we only have contact with our ingroup – or other people who share our demographic and/or psychographic characteristics – we perpetuate unconscious bias. Strategize business process improvements that will diversify your team both traditionally (gender, ethnicity, race, etc.) and cognitively (point of view, background, etc.). This might mean recruiting teammates from new sources and devising ways to bring forward talented individuals who might not be the perfect candidates on paper.

Even a few business process improvements in this area will help you head off subtle biases at the pass. And, if you question your need to make them, spend a few minutes at the Project Implicit website. Designed by Harvard, University of Virginia, and University of Washington psychologists, the site administers Implicit Association Tests to measure personal bias. While you may be unpleasantly surprised at what you uncover, it may well serve as the motivation you need to address this critical issue.

 

Introducing Finland's Universal Basic Income Experiment

It’s not a new concept. In the late 1790s, American statesman Thomas Paine called for a universal payment of £15 per year to all his countrymen in exchange for the right to hold private property.  

First suggested over 200 years ago, the idea of universal basic income never quite went away, and in many circles, it’s actually picking up steam.  

Progressive Finland is officially the first sovereign nation to put it to the test. Two-thousand Finnish citizens, who were selected randomly from those currently receiving unemployment benefits or an income subsidy, will now receive €560 ($587) a month. Everyone gets the same amount of money whether they work or not. The pilot will run for the next two years, and may eventually expand to include all Finns. 

Why the renewed interest in universal basic income now? Stagnant wages since the early aughts is one major reason, as is the declining share of total income earned by workers compared with companies.  

In the private sector, though, the attraction is based on the fear that in the near future, many human jobs will be automated or otherwise taken over by machine intelligence. This notion has been gaining traction since 2013, when a paper by Oxford economists Frey and Osborne predicted that nearly 50 percent of modern jobs were at risk of computerization.  

For more where this came from, check out my new column on Mashable.

Behind the Scenes of the Employee Monitoring Debate

Last summer, I wrote about a Rackspace/University of London study that assessed productivity levels in 120 employees outfitted with wearable monitoring technology. The participants were equipped with one of the three devices – the GENEActiv high-velocity accelerometer wristband, which measures movement and activity; the NeuroSky Mindwave portable biosensor EEG, which monitors brain activity; and the LUMOback posture and activity coach, which issues a pulse to remind its wearer to sit up straight. Participant productivity jumped 8.5 percent and job satisfaction climbed 3.5 percent as a result of the monitoring.

Employee monitoring is increasing in popularity, and the reason goes beyond productivity gains and wider availability of Internet of things-related technology. Compliance with regulations such as the Affordable Care Act now involves understanding exactly how many hours full-time and part-time employees are working so that organizations can accurately classify them and determine benefit eligibility.

In a recent article in Harper’s Magazine, Esther Kaplan investigated the $30 billion telematics industry. Telematics is essentially hardware and software that facilitates real-time employee monitoring. Shipping conglomerate UPS, for example, uses handheld delivery information acquisition devices (DIADs) to track delivery times, speed, stop times, and seat-belt use. When a UPS driver pulls into a delivery location, scans a package, and has the customer sign for it, the DIAD records the time, location and wait and sends the data to the driver’s supervisor. Although this DIAD system was introduced to UPS employees as a safety measure, the devices have saved the company millions in productivity and efficiency gains.

For the rest of the post, check out the SilkRoad blog.

Is Your Culture Corrupt?

Most people believe that governments are corrupt. In fact, fixing corruption in the U.S. government ranked number-two in a list of the most critical issues that should be addressed in the recent presidential election.

Large corporations are no strangers to corruption either. In a 2008 global survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and The Economic Intelligence Unit, an increasing number of large companies said they recognized their vulnerability to corruption and the benefits of effective anti-corruption programs and controls.

Sixty-three percent indicated that they had experienced some form of actual or attempted corruption, and 45 percent have not entered a specific market or pursued a particular opportunity because of corruption risks. However, while 80 percent said they have some form of an anti-corruption program in place, only 22 percent were confident of the program’s effectiveness.

Corruption on a smaller scale is much more likely to get swept under the rug. We are far more likely to tolerate corruption in our small businesses because it doesn’t seem to have any long-term ill effects. But “seem” would be the operative word here. Regardless of the size of your business, corruption—defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain via bribery, conflicts of interest, extortion, embezzlement and fraud—will damage your organization’s reputation and may even have severe operational, financial, legal and regulatory consequences.

It's in your best interest to expose and root out corrupt activities before they sabotage your culture. For recommended action steps, head over to the full post at the AMEX Open Forum.

Is Self-Plagiarism Okay?

I know a very young and successful business book author named Jonah Lehrer.  Lehrer has written two bestselling books and is frequently in the news, but last month it was not for a positive reason.

Slate – among other outlets – recently reported that Lehrer had been caught stealing…from himself.

“Media watcher Jim Romenesko claimed that Jonah, a newly minted New Yorker staff writer, copied his blog post “Why Smart People Are Stupid” from a 2011 Wall Street Journal story “The Science of Irrationality.” A few hours later, New York’s Joe Coscarelli and writer Jacob Silverman discovered a bunch more instances in which Lehrer reheated his leftovers.”

Is there a problem here?

Since I originally published my full post on Fast Track, other evidence has come out against Lehrer.  But my original question about self-plagiarism still stands, and I want to know what you think.  Is this okay, or not okay? 

What is Your Advantage Really?

You probably already know that I am a huge fan of Pat Lencioni. I first met Pat when I wrote about him in the WSJ in 2009 and have devoured his various fables about executives jockeying for key positions and striving for self-actualization in fictional American companies. 

This week, Pat has released his first nonfiction business book, The Advantage.  In it, he argues that the difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are.

Organizations are healthy when they are whole, consistent and complete and when their management, operations and culture are unified.  Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave.

In the book, Pat shares dozens of stories of his many years in the consulting world, along with advice for how we can conduct business in a new way that aligns the organization around a common set of principles and maximizes individual potential.  It's a must-read for established executives and up-and-coming large and small business leaders who recognize that the business world has shifted and want to build an empire based on traditional values like open communication, ethical behavior, trust, and teamwork. 

 

Google is Forever

A few weeks ago, I received this e-mail from reader Ryan Miner that I wanted to share with you:

"When I was a 19 year-old undergraduate student at Duquesne University I created a Facebook group in opposition to a proposal to allow a Gay-Straight Alliance to form on campus. I used the term subhuman to lament homosexuality.

I could not have been more wrong. My words were unabashedly despicable and unambiguously insensitive. My actions were the antithesis of the same faith I used to defend myself, and it was an indelibly poor reflection on my personal character. I embarrassed my family, my friends, my hometown, and Duquesne University. I was in no position to cast such blatant judgment, and I pray that I can be forgiven and learn from this awful experience.

As a result of the media attention and the emerging technology of this decade, I am infinitely attached to my mistake in the annals of Google. The stories you read from the Google results paint a polar opposite picture of who I am today. However, actions inevitably and invariably have consequences, and the reckless comments I made at 19 continue to plague me in my professional career. I have been denied employment and was even fired from a great opportunity as a result of the incident at Duquesne.

I am now looking to expand my career, but each time I submit a new resume, a sense of bleak fear overcomes me, wondering whether or not a company will Google my name only to toss my resume in the trash and move to the next applicant. If only I could relay to a potential employer that my beliefs have changed and I would never engage in that type of behavior in the future. But you reap with you sow, and I will continue to deal with the consequences of my mistake."

There can never be too many stories like this to remind us that Google is forever. 

Book Review: B-A-M: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World

My friend and colleague Barry Moltz has finally written the customer service book that should be required reading for anyone who interfaces with current or potential buyers.   B-A-M, which stands for Bust-A-Myth, debunks the 20 common myths of customer service-from "The customer is always right" to "Customer service means the same thing to everyone," to "Companies achieve customer service by under-promising and over-delivering.” 

In an era where just about everything is a commodity and it’s easier to buy – and slam – something online, strong customer service is more critical than ever.  Yet many companies use these myths as the foundation of their customer service infrastructure and lose money every day in the process.  B-A-M delivers a customer service manifesto for the twenty-first century.  Some of my favorite lessons are the ones that some of the organizations I’ve interacted with recently (that would be you, Orbitz) really need to learn:

·         We will resolve your issues in a reasonable manner and in a reasonable timeframe, or give you a refund or compensate you in manner that leaves you as satisfied as possible.

·         We will empower our employees to resolve an issue at the point it occurs.  

·         We will admit when we made a mistake.

·         When we decide to change something in our agreement, we will let you know in advance in a very public way.

·         We will offer several convenient ways for you to provide feedback on our products or services.

For those of you who don’t know Barry, he’s a small business veteran.  After successfully selling his last operating business, Barry has branched out into a number of entrepreneurship-related activities.  If you’re considering launching a small business, his radio show, Business Insanity, is a must-listen. 

Do What You Say: My Favorite Golden Rule

Everyone knows this golden rule:  “Do unto others as you’d have done to you.”  But I think that fewer people are familiar with this one:

“If you say you are going to do something, follow through.”

There are some people who never volunteer to do anything.  Others simply don’t respond when asked to do a favor they aren’t interested in doing, or don’t have time for. 

And then there are the people who say yes, and then let you down.  These are the most annoying people, don’t you think?   They lose more points for being reminded and still shirking their responsibility, and still more points if you did something for them recently, they told you that they’d love to reciprocate in a specific way, and then they never followed through. 

Look, we’re all busy.  There’s just no way we can be all things to all people.  Therefore, I encourage you to stop for a moment and think before you agree to take something on.  Please do not say yes just because you are non-confrontational or a people pleaser, because I guarantee that you will risk a much more awkward confrontation and will definitely not please the person if you do not deliver once your action is expected.  Those of you in positions of authority or who are high-profile in your industries or organizations are not excused from this advice.  You may not see any consequences from dropping the ball now, but you never know when the person you’ve let down might be the one from whom you need help.  Unless their long-term memory is seriously compromised, there will be trouble.

If you’re worried about forgetting what you said you’d do, write the item on your to-do list and leave it there until it’s completed.  I’ve also gotten into the habit of asking people to e-mail me in a month and remind me if I can’t help them right then and there but think I can in the future.  It has saved me more than once!

 

Help! My Co-Worker is a Communist!

Back in the 50s, admitting you were a communist at work would be enough to land you in jail, so you’d keep your mouth shut.  But nowadays, people will divulge any and all details about themselves to colleagues.  The question is, what do you do when a close co-worker expresses attitudes or beliefs that are in sharp contrast to your own?

A Jewish friend e-mailed me about this issue last week.  She and a group of her colleagues were eating lunch at a table in the cafeteria, and her cubicle mate started going off about the Israeli offensive in Gaza and how despicable it was.  He’s Palestinian, but I guess they’d never had the occasion to discuss the conflict before.  My friend’s a staunch supporter of Israel, and she didn’t know what to do.  Suddenly she felt offended by this guy she’d always liked and resented that he’d brought his unwelcome political stance into their comfortable little world. 

She asked for my advice, and I sympathetically said that it sounded like a difficult situation, which it is.  If you’re in a similar one, I recommend that you try to let your co-worker’s different ideology go unless it affects your daily working life.  Not everyone can always share your point of view, so instead of fixating on the negative information you’ve just uncovered, focus on the positive aspects of the person and what you like and respect about him.  Also, remember that working at an office with someone is not the same as becoming his best friend.  If you keep things casual and don’t expect more, the two of you shouldn’t need to butt heads.