Eliminating Bias in the Hiring Process
Dr. Priscilla Hammond and Dr. Lee Kizer
Benson School of Business, Southern Wesleyan University, Central, SC
Diversifying your workforce requires the evaluation of every part of the employment equation. The recruitment and selection process is a key input to a diverse workforce. Intentionally eliminating bias in the hiring process requires strategic human resource management processes such as recruiting in teams, awareness training for recruiting and selection, rewording job descriptions to eliminate gender bias, focusing on outcomes rather than skills, using blind resumes, standardizing the hiring process, and utilizing skill-based tests/assessments (Heneman, Judge, & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2015). Two of these areas will be discussed here: recruiting and hiring in teams and awareness training in recruitment and selection.
Team Collaboration
One effective solution in making certain that diversity goals are met is to use collaboration in teams during the recruiting and hiring process. Although there are many approaches in eliminating bias, the importance of recruiting in teams cannot be underestimated. For teams to be effective, however, there are steps an organization’s human resources department can make to ensure better results. If an organization carefully weighs the advantages and disadvantages of team collaboration, it will enhance its hiring process in relation to fairness and the reduction of bias.
When people work together in teams in the hiring process, they can learn from one another. Team members can challenge ideas, strategies and even their decisions. Since no two people are exactly alike, a variety of knowledge and skills are available in a team setting to assist members in arriving at more effective outcomes. Since two heads are better than one, moreover, collaboration helps in covering the weaknesses among team members and building up their collective strengths. In a similar way, effects on morale as well as increased trust among team members can even have a more positive view of each member’s input.
There can be some downsides to collaboration among team members in the hiring process, and the human resources department in an organization should address them. If too many people on the team want to lead and are unwilling to take a backseat to others, morale may suffer and even cause tension. Resulting conflict could cause goals of diversity to be blocked, and a negative impact on the hiring process may result. On the other hand, however, conflict may prove functional if it results in choosing an innovative diversity strategy not previously considered (King, Hebl, & Beal, 2009).
A hiring team of people with diverse backgrounds and different skill-sets can produce a great functional group and be an important step to ensure fairness. Although this type of team may invoke an irritating diversity of opinion, it can also bring a different view points and unique perspectives that help in eliminating the gender bias often seen in homogeneous teams. A balanced but diverse hiring team will assist in eliminating the type of unconscious bias resulting from choosing recruits most like those making the decision but rather choose candidates who will result in the creation of a welcoming and inclusive environment (Hanganu-Opatz, Mameli, Ragnhildur, & Spires-Jones, 2015).
Awareness Training
Recruiters must know the diversity outcome goals of the organization; however, diversity must move beyond being a concern among those responsible for initial recruitment and selection activities. If people are recruited into organizations in which diversity is not a value, recruiters will continuously find themselves searching for diverse candidates, only to lose them to bias in the interview process or after placement in the organization because training, retention, and promotion opportunities are not available to diverse employees. Though organizations have diversity goals, unconscious bias in the workplace impacts how hiring, staffing, training, and promotion decisions are made. Strategic human resource management (SHRM) looks at each part of the employment equation to find each factor that impacts diversity outcomes, negatively or positively.
Konrad, Yang, and Maurer (2016) studied diversity and equality management systems (DEMS) and proposing a link from SHRM to diversity strategy and implementation, finding that diversity that is seen as a separate recruitment function will not be effective in creating more diversity in staffing over the long term.
To be effective and to create value for firms, DEMS must include practices that link DEM with business strategy. Only if DEMS link diversity strategy to business strategy and articulate how diversity contributes to firm effectiveness will DEMS be able to contribute to firm financial performance. . . . Effective DEMS include practices that go beyond EEA requirements to cover the entire staffing process from recruitment to training and development to providing supports like work-life flexibility. Only DEMS that focus on development, retention, and career advancement will result in representative employment statistics in the longer term. (Konrad, Yang, & Maurer, 2016, p. 101)
Strategic human resource management means that awareness training needs to go beyond the recruitment function to eliminate bias from hiring and retention. Organizations tend to focus on bias when it makes the news. Companies typically respond with racial-bias training, but the biased action is now an artifact in the company’s organizational culture that impacts their ability to recruit and retain diverse talent and has the power to impact financial performance. Organizational culture needs to include diversity as a primary value, not just as a recruitment tactic, but because organizations that have more executive-level ethnic and cultural diversity are 33% more likely to be profit leaders in their industries, and those with more women in roles that generate revenue are higher performing in both diversity and profitability (Hunt, Prince, Dixon-Fyle, & Yee, 2018).
When developing a training program to eliminate bias, the first step is to conduct a needs assessment. Awareness training should not be a one-size-fits-all orientation. A representative sample of recruiters, human resource managers, hiring managers, and those involved in the selection and retention of employees should be assessed with a validated instrument such as the Implicit Association Test, which examines test-takers’ unconscious biases (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html). The resulting data from such a needs assessment can be used to develop learning objectives as the framework for training and to create benchmarks to assess the effectiveness of the training against. Without training in overcoming personal bias, an organization will not be able to eliminate bias in hiring.
Conclusion
Since most countries have laws preventing discrimination in hiring based on protected characteristics such as race, sex, religion, age and national origin, it is important that organizations do as much as they can to eliminate bias in hiring as well as creating diversity in staffing over the long term. In addition, studies show an increase in profitability and desirability of employment with diverse organizations. Team collaboration and awareness training can go a long way in ensuring that a fair and equitable workforce is established and retained.
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References
Hanganu-Opatz, I.L., Mameli, M., Ragnhildur, T.K. & Spires-Jones, T. L. (2015). You are not alone: Selecting your group members and leading an outstanding research team. European Journal of Neuroscience, 42, 3012–3017.
Heneman, H.G., Judge, T.A., & Kammeyer-Mueller, J. K. (2015). Staffing Organizations. Mishawaka, IN: Pangloss Industries.
Hunt, V. Prince, S., Dixon-Fyle, S., & Yee, L. (2018, January). Delivery through diversity. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Organization/Our%20Insights/Delivering%20through%20diversity/Delivering-through-diversity_full-report.ashx
King, E., Hebl, M., Beal, D. (2009). Conflict and cooperation in diverse workgroups. Journal of Social Issues, 65(2), 261-285. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01600.x.
Konrad, A. M., Yang, Y., Maurer, C. (2016). Antecedents and outcomes of diversity and equality management systems: An integrated institutional agency and strategic human resource management approach. Human Resource Management, 55(1), 83–107.