INDUSTRY COMMENT Unconscious bias W Kelly Paul, Air Products
e spend a lot of time, quite rightly, talking about prejudice and inequality in the workplace, and in society in general. The engineering industry, like
many others, is happy and willing to stand up and discuss these issues within the sector and how to make them a thing of the past. With current events bringing inequality back to the top of the news agenda companies have been quick to reiterate this commitment to tackling it.
Today, you’ll be hard pushed to find engineering companies without robust equality and diversity policies and strategies in place, but despite that, the numbers don’t lie. According to the Women’s Engineering Society, the UK has the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe – less than 10 per cent – while the Royal Academy of Engineering has found that just six per cent are from BAME backgrounds. Although being conscious of what we say and do is vitally important, we have to remember that sometimes it’s what we don’t that can also cause damage. Unconscious bias is a term all of us have heard and many have an outline understanding of its meaning, but it’s not something that rises to the top of our lists as a problem to tackle. We need to acknowledge that unconscious thoughts and behaviours are still a fundamental barrier which hamper our efforts to achieve equality in the industry.
These biases are naturally harder to identify in ourselves or in others, but we should not allow ourselves to be excused from tackling them. Unconscious bias relates to perceptions around
race, gender, sexuality, age and ability, and increasing our awareness of it will help us tackle problems not just in our day to day work, but in recruitment and retention – issues which our sector in particular continually struggles with. Taking steps to end it will help us move forward with achieving workplace equality, not just in terms of improved company policies, but by tackling day to day issues which can affect our colleagues and even prevent their progression.
Unconscious bias is an issue which we naturally think of in conjunction with workplace equality, as we should, but it’s also worth bearing in mind in other areas of work. Let’s take a different example. You’re in a meeting with two engineers, both men. One is older and more outspoken, while the younger is quieter. You will naturally gravitate to the older man to ask questions, assuming he is the most qualified to answer them, despite having no direct knowledge that this is the case. Similarly, you may have an employee who initially struggled with workloads but has since worked hard to become reliable and trusted. When picking people for an important assignment, do you look at this person’s ongoing performance or are you swayed by the struggles they had years before?
So, once we identify that there is a problem, how can we take action to combat it?
At Air Products, this is something we’ve put a great deal of work into, through the roll out of a development and training programme for all our managers. This aims to show our staff how they can recognise and acknowledge unconscious bias, in themselves and others, and actively encourage inclusion.
There are four simple habits we can work to develop:
1. Slow it down – It sounds simple, but if we’re in a rush, under pressure or even just tired we’re much more likely to slip back into unconsciously biased behaviour. In many cases we need to work quickly, but when possible, we should take a step back and take a more methodical approach to our decision making.
2. Question and challenge your thinking – once we slow down the decision-making process, then we can test our assumptions about people, situations and tasks. We should take note of our own responses and reactions to different situations, thinking back to how we came to a particular decision and the reasons for it – particularly whether we’re filling in gaps in our knowledge with assumptions. It’s not always a comfortable exercise but being honest with yourself is key.
3. Consult with others – it’s always important to consult with others so we’re not stuck with our own perceptions and biases. Other perspectives are hugely valuable in testing our assumptions, especially if they come from outside of our usual network.
4. Hold yourself and others accountable – we have a responsibility to check and test both ourselves and those around us. As we work harder to notice biased behaviours in ourselves, we should also draw our colleagues’ attention to their own. It takes courage to speak up, but it’s important to lead by example to generate real change. This may mean saying something in the moment or having a quiet conversation with someone later on. Either way, we shouldn’t let the opportunity pass.
We try to encourage our employees to translate this theory into practice and bring unconscious biases to the forefront of their minds by not just training them on unconscious and privilege bias but also other activates like - • Listening sessions • Community activities • Focus on diversity actions
This encouragement is based around these rules and helps each of them to take personal responsibility for recognising unconscious prejudices which may impact their own behaviour.
As with every issue, change won’t happen overnight. However, if each of us take individual responsibility we can make real, positive progress. Tackling diversity and inclusion has to be done on more than just a corporate level, and it has to be about more than ticking boxes. All of us should stop, think, challenge and change if we’re going to make a difference
BSEE
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BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER SEPTEMBER 2020 7
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