Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Subtle Signs of Unconscious Bias

When I talked to a gender-bias researcher at a prestigious U.S. university off the record, she informed me that I should not take my success for granted. Based on the researcher’s experience, being a short woman in Corporate America requires that I'm twice as smart, twice as competent and twice as hardworking as a tall white man.

It's not like people readily believe that tall white men naturally make better leaders. But 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 as old as human beings, as our ancestors developed it to quickly categorize threats in a hostile environment. In other words, we usually don’t have ill intentions when we discriminate.

The good news is that people are getting better at spotting subtle bias at work, as well as mastering business process improvement techniques and strategies that root it out before it does too much damage to a company's culture. 

Let's examine a few places bias at work commonly show up.

Resume Filters

You may not realize it, but people don't review resumes and profiles on merit alone. When unconscious bias creeps in, we can negatively assess a candidate based on their name, address, photo or educational institution.

For the rest of the piece, check out the AMEX Business website.

How to Cope with Long-Term Uncertainty

As much as experts want to predict how the coronavirus situation will pan out, the truth is that no one really knows what's going to happen. The good news is that there are several things business owners can do to reduce their uncertainty. 

1. Act on the outcomes you can realistically anticipate.

Businesses based on in-person interaction already know that customers won’t be coming in for a while. If you don’t yet have a digital means to offer your product or service, consider which products and services are most appropriate to sell online, and then add e-commerce to your website. There are a number of e-commerce solutions such as Shopify, BigCommerce and Squarespace.

While you may want to delegate this to a tech-savvy staff member, both of you should make note of the ways in which online business differs from brick and mortars. With the reduction in frequent in-person connection points, you'll need to go out of your way to engage with your customers via social media and email outreach. Try working with your marketing team to create a content calendar—either an old-school spreadsheet or a tech-based solution like Later or HubSpot—that tracks analytics around your social engagement so you can see what resonates with your customers.

2. Brainstorm with other business owners.

Another way you can deal with uncertainty is to identify other business owners in your sphere who are facing the same challenges you are, and come together to devise solutions to keep the collective group afloat. In particular, experts recommend launching online engagements that preserve the heartbeat and character of a community. 

Midnight Market, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based indoor festival that curates 20 food vendors to recreate an open air, international market, did just that. Understanding that they can’t open for the foreseeable future, Midnight Market’s owners rallied their partners to host a "Take-Out Flash Mob," that is, encouraging followers to order takeout from eight participating restaurants.

"It gives them a burst of cash to pay employees, keep the lights on and helps them continue normal operations so they can continue making delicious food for us!" the company wrote on its website.

To create a social distancing appropriate recreation of their event, Midnight Market promoted cocktail recipes that were easy to create at home, live streamed of DJ sets, and shared drinking games. And they're planning another one with a different selection of restaurants.

For the rest of my tips, check out the full article on the AMEX Business website.

 

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.

 

Keep Your Business Safe During a Natural Disaster

If it seems like natural disasters are increasing, it's not your imagination. And those disasters have a very real effect on company's bottom lines.

According to a 2018 report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, direct economic losses due to climate-related disasters have increased 150 percent over the last 20 years. During the period of 1998-2017, disaster-hit countries reported direct economic losses of $2,908 billion. The United States was hit hardest at $945 billion. As you might expect, floods and storms are the two most frequently occurring disasters.

Given these numbers, every business owner today may want to consider proactively developing disaster strategies to protect human and material assets and maintain a healthy amount of working capital should trouble strike. 

Let's examine four solutions for natural disasters you might employ to keep your business safe and increase your peace of mind.

1. Practice strong working capital management.

Working capital is the difference between a company's current assets like cash, unpaid bills and inventories of raw materials and finished goods, and its current liabilities such as payroll and taxes. Business owners use working capital to measure operational efficiency and overall financial health. 

 

Just as smart business owners build working capital reserves during anticipated slow periods, you should develop a similar strategy to cope with natural disaster-related disruption. 

Ensuring that you have enough cash and liquid assets on hand to cover sudden expenses and/or loss of income can mean the difference between your business' survival and its demise.

2. Take a second look at your insurance.

Now is the time to review your insurance policies and assess how well (or not) you'd be covered in a natural disaster. 

Sometimes it isn't intuitive. Using the hurricane scenario as an example, your run-of-the-mill business policy might cover losses from broken glass that's the result of high winds and flooding that's the result of rain. But if you want to protect your location from flooding that comes from groundwater, you may require supplementary flood insurance. 

If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, you can expect to pay higher premiums, and some carriers may not insure you at all. For more detailed information on what's generally covered and where, review the Insurance Information Institute's website.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the AMEX Business site. 

The Pros and Cons of International Entrepreneurship

 

In an increasingly global world, the advantages of international trade can give your business a substantial boost.

According to Abhi Golhar, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Nurse Practitioners Clinical Rotations, chief among the advantages of international trade are market-risk diversification and less competition.

“If there happen to be increasing regulations in the business owner's home country that may inhibit the sale of the business's widgets, identifying other markets with less regulation could be vital for the longevity of the business," Golhar says. “Also, the business owner may find that by expanding into a different market, there may be fewer competitors, which can result in higher profit margins and more business volume."

Added to the advantages of international trade are lower production costs. 

"Business owners should consider international trade when the cost of labor or products they can source locally negatively impacts their bottom line," says Scott Kacmarski, CEO of business process outsourcing company Reps Direct.

Additionally, becoming proficient in international trade in the early stages of your business can help you avoid prohibitively high costs down the line—another perk of expanding globally.

“The cost of one product or service may seem like a small issue at the beginning," Kacmarski says. “The problem comes when you have many products or employees. High costs then lead to cash-flow problems, and it's harder to go international once your business is more mature and operating at a larger scale."

International Trade Has Its Downside

Of course, there are disadvantages of international trade as well.

For one, if you don't have what Golhar calls “boots on the ground," it could increase your probability of failure.

“When my father opened a business in his hometown in India, his brother—who he trusted completely—assisted him," he says. "Without a partner with an established track record and contacts, international trade can be enormously difficult."

To read more, check out the full piece on the AMEX OPENForum.

 

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Should You Pursue Foreign Markets?

Operating a business outside your home country sounds appealing, and can in fact be an excellent way to take your organization to the next level. But, in addition to ensuring that you've perfected current processes first, expanding to foreign markets requires substantial time and resources and careful consideration of several factors. 

Haithem Elembaby is a startup founder with multiple exits, and is now an SVP at Harbinger, a firm that helps foreign startups gain sales traction in the U.S. market.

“An initial step is understanding where your value proposition will be most compelling. Sometimes, carving a niche that your competition has avoided is a much easier strategy than going head to head," he says.

But before you embark on that strategy, consider the following advice to help lay the groundwork for success abroad.

1. Join forces with the locals.

Certain markets may require collaboration with a local partner.

“Make sure you assess local regulations and expectations from new market entrants when determining which foreign markets to pursue," suggests Elembaby.

Tim McHugh, CEO of global book publisher Saddleback Educational Publishing agrees, citing the example of Starbucks. “For years, Starbucks didn't know how to enter India as coffee is not as big as tea in India," McHugh says, "but recently [they] partnered with a local company, Tata Beverages to have a better chance of success."

When considering foreign markets, it helps to learn the nuances of how your new audience makes purchases. 

“Map the key stakeholders and understand how to interact with them," says Elembaby. “For example, does the culture value directness or is relationship building more important? What works in New York will not necessarily work in London, let alone Beijing."

You should also think through the economic and political stability of the region you're targeting.

For the rest of the piece, head on over to the AMEX OPENForum.

Why Compliance is Relevant for Everyone

 

Regulatory compliance is the act of adhering to laws, regulations, standards or guidelines relevant to a particular business. High-profile examples of such laws are the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

 Since violations of regulations often result in legal action or fines, many organizations have responded to these laws by hiring regulatory compliance officers to manage the process. Smaller businesses may not have this option, but it's important for owners to fully comprehend the role that regulatory compliance plays in their organizations.

According to Russell Kommer, CEO of Microsoft support services firm eSoftware Associates, this is true even if a company is not in a traditionally regulated industry. 

“Not understanding how regulatory compliance and its applications could cause either long- or short-term issues with the potential to derail your business," he says.

Michael Fellows, CEO of software development firm Broadway Lab, offers an example. “Acquiring customer trust should be every business's main focus," he says. “Regulations are there to protect the customer in many cases. A failure to comply can result in financial loss due to legal repercussions like fines, but also from customers choosing more trustworthy alternatives."

Creating Your Regulatory Compliance Strategy

Regulatory compliance strategies should include:

• how your organization will address relevant standards from an operational perspective;
• how you will establish or modify corresponding processes; and 
• how effective risk mitigation and overall compliance success will be measured

For more where this came from, check out the AMEX OPENForum.

My Takeaways from the ATD Tech Skills Gap Panel

The technology skills gap is a well-known issue in American employment circles. Yet, research tends to focus on only one aspect of the problem – the shortage of hard tech skills like programming and information security management. But there is another, perhaps even more critical dimension to the technology skills gap¹: the lack of applied tech skills in the workplace.

As we’ve talked about previously, when an individual has applied tech skills,² they can integrate people, processes, data, and devices to effectively inform business strategy and plan for and react to unanticipated shifts in direction.

At the annual Association for Training and Development (ATD) conference³ in San Diego, I moderated an applied technology skills gap panel with John Aquilino, Manager, Skills Gap Training and Services, DeVryWORKS; Jessica DiCicco, VP, Learning & Development, Randstad; Jackie Linton, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, City of Philadelphia; Kristen Switzer, Sr. People Development Manager, Taylor Morrison; and Andre Walker, VP of Training & Development, Securitas Security Services.

Applied Technology Skills: Why Now?

I began by asking the panel why applied technology skills have become so critical in business. “Everyone in our company, whether they are in construction, purchasing, accounting, or customer service, touches a technology system. They need to understand these systems to do their jobs well,” said Switzer. “We are also offering training on a variety of technology platforms that require employees to come up to speed.”

Next, I asked John to comment on how his cross-industry employer partners are equipping their workforces with applied technology skills. “Access to training and development is not the issue,” he responded. “It’s much more about how those skills are curated and aligned to arrive at actionable outcomes.”

Panelists shared that their organizations are searching for and using solutions that help their employees develop “soft skills” related to technology adoption such as critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving. “Applying knowledge of Big Data, digital infrastructure, and integrated processes is essential to effective decision-making,” said Aquilino. “Companies are infusing learning experiences with technology, so employees can leverage the familiarity of working with machines in their daily roles.”

For more panel insights, head over to the full piece at the DeVryWORKS website.

How to Know When To Take a Risk

Starting a business usually involves significant personal, professional and financial risks. But while most business owners and entrepreneurs are hardly strangers to business risks, it's often hard to know what constitutes a risk that's likely to succeed.

Adam Mendler, CEO of technology venture company The Veloz Group, says that an acceptable risk is one that's well-justified and offers a higher expected value than alternatives.

“Before taking significant business risks, it's important to identify, research and evaluate all your options—which may range from radical action to doing nothing," he says.

According to Dan Spalter, co-founder of roommate matching service Circle for Roommates good business risks should be taken with the big picture intention of improving pre-determined KPIs.

“Before taking any substantial risk, your team should try to find less risky means of achieving the same goal," he says. "If a safer alternative does not exist, a business owner should brainstorm creative ways to reduce the potential loss."

Both Mendler and Spalter have taken valuable business risks to drive their organizations forward, including the following:

Going All In

"The biggest risk was taking the plunge, leaving a corporate career to start something from scratch," says Mendler. "The entrepreneurial journey has been invaluable, though, as I have learned, grown and developed in ways unlike any others in my professional or educational careers."

Competing With Established Companies

Many owners are in the business of disruption. This means, however, that you're competing with organizations with multi-million dollar budgets, and the ability to take and implement your concept.

It may seem like there's no way to win in this scenario, but by being agile and innovative—and by taking calculated business risks that other companies won't touch—you can be competitive.

For the rest of this piece, check out the AMEX OPENForum.

How to Retain Millennials Today

It’s not unusual to hear HR professionals at large, publicly-traded companies lament: “No one wants to work here. I wish this was a nonprofit.”

On the surface, this makes sense. After all, nonprofit organizations are often an easier sell for millennials, who say they want the opportunity to do meaningful work on issues that benefit society. But as they get older, millennials who want to pay down debt and start saving are increasingly looking to employers who pay handsomely. And if they do accept a lower salary for a job, they expect that nonprofit environment to provide the most rewarding experience they can imagine. As we all know, however, even the noblest nonprofits are still organizations, and no organization is perfect.

AccessLex Institute is a nonprofit that advocates for policies that make legal education work better for students and society alike and conducts research on the most critical issues facing legal education today. The mission is intriguing, especially given how many young professionals consider and eventually enroll in law school. And sure enough, AccessLex never had much of a problem attracting millennial candidates for its open positions. The organization’s challenge has involved getting them to stay once new hires realize that nonprofit employment can be stressful and frustrating at times -- just like any job.

Assimilate Talent Strategically And Early

Based on nearly 15 years of working with millennials, I can confidently say that the most important thing organizations must do to retain millennials is to assimilate them strategically and early. First impressions matter a great deal and new millennial hires aren't likely to give a company a second chance if they don't like what they experience initially.

To that end, AccessLex set out to increase its retention of new millennial employees by creating a high-tech, high-touch virtual onboarding system. The tool was built based on what they learned was new hires’ biggest hurdle -- feeling disconnected from the culture. The organization’s internal research revealed that young employees would accept a job, come in for a few weeks and keep interviewing. If a better opportunity presented itself, nothing stopped the new hire from taking it. “We knew if we could make them feel part of the organization right away and get them to hang out with us for a year, we could actually keep them for much longer,” said Tanya Papahristos, Director of Human Resources for AccessLex.

For the rest of the piece, check out Forbes.com.