Establish a diverse and inclusive organisational culture for business success
The drive for gender parity in the workplace is not where it needs to be yet. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2022, as it stands today, it’ll take another 132 years for the gender gap in the workplace to close. The contributors to a lapse in female representation in the workplace, include The Great Resignation, strains from the pandemic, and other challenges that women in the workplace face. This year the percentage of gender parity (62.9 percent) in the labour force is the lowest level registered since the index was initially put together with unemployment rates having increased and consistently remaining highest for women. Company culture is one of the factors that can make or break progress in closing the gender gaps in the workplace which is why it is a positive step for employers to be mindful of what biases exist and how to ensure they aren’t embedded in company culture.
Company culture is the behaviours and beliefs surrounding how management and employees conduct themselves, interact and handle business amongst outsiders. For many SMEs, the culture is set by the founder, CEO, or top management. Their values trickle down and set the tone for the company culture. The culture of a company is not overtly defined but rather develops over time. It reflects in the aspects of a company such as dress code, values, business hours, staff benefits, hiring processes, client treatment, operations, office, and the team set up. In each of these areas, there can be inherent biases, usually toward women and other minorities.
At RecruitMyMom, we have seven primary values in how our team operates and in how we aim to serve our clients. To highlight three of them, we aim to grow through feedback, to be authentic as it brings real rewards, and to be fair and honest. As a company that supports working mothers in their job success, we also provide employers with highly skilled women who add value from day one. When you partner with RecruitMyMom, you join hands with a community that stands against biases in the workplace and provides trusted professional skills.
Here are a few of the many different types of biases that can end up in company culture.
Biases and how to avoid them in company culture
It’s easy to assume that men are the primary bias culprits - this is not the case. Some female leaders fall into certain biases towards other professionals too. The biases we list below are specifically related to unconscious bias towards women and mothers.
1. Framing bias
Framing bias refers to decisions made based on the way that information is presented to someone rather than based solely on the facts. Framing is harmful in the recruitment process because employers or recruiters may disqualify a candidate based on the way their CV looks or how the information is presented to them by another person looking at applications. It is easy for employers to make snap judgements without properly considering all the basic facts.
What can you do about this?
Instead of making initial assumptions about mothers or women candidates in the job-seeking process, try to rephrase the facts to see what impact it has on the conclusion. Avoid impulsive and reflexive decision-making and focus on a logical approach.
2. Anchoring bias
Anchoring bias occurs when recruitment managers or employers have previous knowledge about a candidate and then use that information as a reference point about someone. This skews decision-making processes and allows for a candidate to potentially be ‘unfit’ for the job based on something that they might not have been able to control. For example, if a woman has recently had a baby, and someone on the selection committee knows about it and doesn’t trust their ability to get appropriate help with childcare, they might disqualify them.
What can you do about this?
The easiest way to avoid anchoring bias is to use critical thinking and only use the facts as they present themselves. In the example mentioned above, when conducting a job interview with a new mom, ask some questions about her childcare plans and what plan B might be if it is a concern for the company.
3. Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is when people look for information that confirms an existing belief. In this bias, people will overlook information that is contradictory to their judgement. For mothers in the workplace, this looks like recruiters or potential employers doing some background work to find out if what they believe about the person is correct, based on their assumptions and the conclusions drawn about the information they find.
What can you do about this?
To avoid confirmation bias in company culture, the first step is to acknowledge that naturally people will look for evidence to prove what they believe or think especially when it comes to job seekers. It speeds up the decision-making process when employers can cancel out candidates quicker, which is tempting for busy recruiters. The best way to dodge this effect is to search for information that does not confirm a belief or conclusion about something. Due diligence is about more than just proving an assumption right, it’s about looking at both sides of the coin and then deciding on something logically.
4. Hindsight bias
Hindsight bias is when someone feels they have the right to say, “I knew it all along” based on a prediction. This kind of bias prevents learning and a teachable attitude to the recruitment process. In the work environment these days, being unteachable and a ‘know it all’ isn’t conducive to breaking the bias and providing a more inclusive workspace. An example of this is if a mother is 5 minutes late for something due to running late on an errand or because of something that happened with their kid. An employer could draw the wrong conclusion that this is a pattern, where it might just be one instance. The person might not get the job because they are unreliable due to their kids - which could have been a prediction in the selection process because the person is a mother.
What can you do about this?
Keep a record of the decisions made in the recruitment process and why certain conclusions are drawn in the selection and interview process. This allows for the recruitment team to monitor and use precedent for decisions and to ensure that there is room for learning within the decision-making culture of the company.
5. Representativeness heuristic bias
Representativeness heuristic bias is another cognitive bias that occurs when someone thinks that if two objects are similar then they are correlated with each other. This type of bias can be similar to other forms of bias such as association bias where a person tends to lean toward similar things. Neither of these is the case and worth concluding on. As an example, if a mother wears a certain style of clothing in an interview but this is not the personal preference of the interviewer, a bias could slip into the decision-making process. Another example would be if someone looks a certain way that makes them a good employee, this is not the case.
What can you do about this?
Make sure there is diversity in the selection committee and a strong measure of accountability within the company culture. If there’s any bias in team members, call it out and address it.
The best tool to combat any bias is awareness and company-wide understanding. When people have an understanding of why it matters, they will notice it quickly and avoid it.
Work with RecruitMyMom to change the narrative
When you load a job on the RecruitMyMom website, you take a step toward a bias-free culture automatically. By partnering with an agency that genuinely cares about women in the workplace, and provides them with meaningful work with the flexibility they require you open your doors to a narrative shift in the workplace. There’s nothing worse than not knowing what or how to address something that causes toxicity and essentially a lack of DEI and profitability. This blog has hopefully shed some light on the biases you might encounter and how to address them head-on. Identify where these are at work and resolve them to widen the talent pool and contribute to greater gender parity in South Africa.
