Opinion
Here Is Why Unconscious Bias Should Be the Least of Your Worries.
— May 17, 2022

By Paolo Gaudiano
By Paolo Gaudiano
There are many kinds of unconscious bias, but all of them can be classified as individual biases, that is, biases in the way an individual thinks or behaves. Individual biases can be conscious or unconscious—meaning that the person exhibiting the bias may or may not be aware that their thoughts or actions are biased— but, in either case, individual biases impact workplace DEI primarily through interactions between individuals. Examples of individual biases include: an executive who is uncomfortable mentoring women; a recruiter who does not believe candidates from a community college are worth interviewing; a manager who tends to assign better projects to younger reports; an employee who uses racial slurs against a co-worker.
What few seem to realize is that there are many other kinds of biases within an organization that are not individual biases. The goal of this article is to introduce the notion of organizational biases, to provide some examples, and to show that organizational biases can have a much greater impact on workplace DEI than individual biases. A separate article will also show that, in many cases, it is possible to identify and mitigate organizational biases, yielding a much greater positive impact on workplace DEI than unconscious bias training.
Read the full Forbes article.
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Paolo Gaudiano is an Adjunct Associate Professor.