How Employers Can Help Employees Address Deep-Seated Biases

The trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s death reminds us: individual biases may have serious consequences for Employers and Employees.

Harboring Biases is Bad Business

Employers do their best to establish policies that reduce the chances of illegal discrimination – the kind that results in unfair or unequal treatment based on who / what you are: race, color, national origin; gender or sexual orientation; religion; disability; age; pregnancy; marital status; etc.

Addressing people’s deep-seated biases is a sensitive topic, because the mere implication that someone is racist or discriminatory may, in itself, become a liability for the employer or the company.

So, how can companies protect their organizations, reputations and customers, while enabling employees to get a grip on biases they may celebrate, at one extreme…or possess unknowingly, at the other?

Clearly, mistreatment of employees, colleagues, customers or suppliers, based on deep-seated biases is bad for business and just perpetuates bad karma.

Cringing at Our Own Voice

Most of us hate to listen to our own voices, partly because we sound different in a recording than we think our voices really sound. But there is another, more substantial reason we don’t like our voices on playback – we are able to listen to what we say and how we say it.

At home, for instance, family members often speak to each other callously, ignoring that our tone of voice may be excessively accusing or punishing. Yet, if we were recorded during such episodes and had the opportunity to listen to ourselves, without the fear of embarrassment or scolding, we likely would develop our own critical understanding of our extreme behavior.

The same applies to listening to our own voice in a professional setting. We don’t like hearing ourselves messing-up on a sales pitch or unwittingly passing on misleading information. By listening to ourselves and analyzing what we say, our tone-of-voice and how we respond to various situations and people, we can increase our awareness and improve during our next interaction.

Only through self-awareness are we able to modify the way we relate to people and find better ways to communicate.

Analytics and the Art of Self-Awareness

With new, innovative technology now able to capture and analyze Face-to-Face (F2F) interactions among employees, and between staff and customers, employers can help their staff become more self-aware of their biases and how they are expressed in the work environment.

Using Reveal’s F2F.AI “face-to-face artificial intelligence” solution, captured dialogue is processed into a playback, a transcript, “key words” frequently mentioned, speaker sentiment, and various cross-references providing actionable insights. These objective products offer insights into a single conversation, as well as collective data on hundreds, thousands or millions of conversations.

By making these tools available to employees, as part of a Bias Training and Management program, employers can help individuals identify their own inappropriate responses or unacceptable behavior.

Collective information can bring to the organization’s attention problem areas that should be addressed with staff, such as a condescending tone of voice or impatience when speaking to people of a certain age, color, disability or gender orientation. Objective data produced through technology can provide organizations with a valuable tool for improving self-awareness and increasing compliance with non-discrimination policies.