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Carri Bugbee

Is Your Company's Diversity Training Making You More Biased? - 0 views

www.strategy-business.com/...raining-Making-You-More-Biased

inclusion diversity diversity training sexism silicon valley tech harassment

shared by Carri Bugbee on 11 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • Why, then, does it spark a backlash? The answer has to do with biases deeply entrenched in most people’s patterns of thinking — attitudes not about race or gender per se, but about the nature of autonomy and choice, and about group membership. The political conflicts around “political correctness” and inclusiveness stem from the same cognitive issues.
  • Diversity training involves hiring practices and helps ensure legal compliance. Inclusion training focuses on creating the kind of unbiased atmosphere and broad leadership opportunities that will attract diverse employees to stay.
  • All of these programs directly address the problem of bias. But the unfortunate truth is that you can’t eliminate bias simply by outlawing it. Most people don’t like being told what to believe, and anything that feels like pressure to think a certain way makes people want to do the opposite.
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  • In a study published in 2011, “Ironic Effects of Antiprejudice Messages,” participants were divided into two groups — an autonomy group and a control group — and asked to read a brief antiprejudice essay.
  • Participants who read the autonomy essay displayed less prejudice, as expected. But participants who read the control essay tended to test as more prejudiced than they had before. Reading the demands set off what the researchers called a “counterresponse to threatened autonomy”: a backlash. In other words, employees need to feel that they’re freely choosing to be nonprejudiced, not that they’re having it forced upon them.
  • Backlash is also triggered by the message that differences among people are valuable. There is a deeply tribal aspect of human nature that reacts negatively to this message
  • Studies have shown that when countries pursue multiculturalism policies, many people become more racist and more hostile toward immigrants. Laboratory studies have also shown that watching a video celebrating multiculturalist values can increase viewers’ levels of prejudice against immigrants.
  • people with authoritarian personalities — those valuing strong and forceful control of situations and society — tend to become more racist when faced with the inclusion message, not less. “Well-meaning programs celebrating multiculturalism…might aggravate more than educate, might intensify rather than diminish, intolerance,”
  • In short, when people perceive one another as members of the same in-group, racial bias — and possibly other forms of bias against groups of people — tends to melt away. Thus, the way to increase inclusion in the workplace is to make everyone feel like they’re part of the same team.
Carri Bugbee

Atlassian finds Bay Area tech is taking less action on improving diversity and inclusio... - 0 views

www.bizjournals.com/...ction-diversity-inclusion.html

silicon valley women sexism tech harassment diversity

shared by Carri Bugbee on 05 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Software maker Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) found some surprises in its second such poll looking at diversity and inclusion at major tech employers. Big tech companies that have poured millions into becoming more diverse failed to show significant improvements from last year to this year. Its first survey found early last year that 83 percent of tech employees believed their company was already diverse.
  • Bay Area tech workers said they’re seeing fewer formal diversity initiatives from their companies, dropping from 55 percent in 2017 to 45 percent this year.
  • The lack of progress is reflected in several recent studies, including one from the Ascend Foundation last fall that found representation of most women and minority groups in tech sector leadership roles has been stagnant for the past decade, and the number of some minority groups in tech is actually declining.Blanche said she would have expected companies would be investing more in addressing the issue. Companies might be more afraid than ever of taking big leaps and failing, though.
  • Carri Bugbee on 05 Apr 18
     
    The lack of progress is reflected in several recent studies, including one from the Ascend Foundation last fall that found representation of most women and minority groups in tech sector leadership roles has been stagnant for the past decade, and the number of some minority groups in tech is actually declining. Blanche said she would have expected companies would be investing more in addressing the issue. Companies might be more afraid than ever of taking big leaps and failing, though.
Carri Bugbee

The Ways Tech Companies Alienate Women - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ey-women-hiring-diversity.html

tech sexism female silicon valley entrepreneurs harassment technology discrimination

shared by Carri Bugbee on 15 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • at least one small component of this problem is immediately solvable: Many companies are alienating the qualified women who want to work for them, and who they want to hire, during the interview process itself.
  • While Silicon Valley companies are enthusiastically putting money into STEM programs in schools and nonprofits focused on diversity, with the goal of creating a richer pipeline of talent in 10 years, they’re missing opportunities to make simple, immediate improvements by changing how they communicate with women who are sitting across the table from them now.
  • here’s how it usually goes in the introductory meeting: A well-meaning executive boasts that his company has been financially supporting a number of nonprofit coding organizations that aim to train female engineers. He tells us he’ll have a booth at the Grace Hopper conference, the largest annual gathering of women in tech. He complains about how hard it is to “move the needle” on diversity numbers, especially when a staff is in the thousands.
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  • what the executives don’t give as much thought to are some of the simplest determinants of how successful a company will be in hiring diverse candidates. Will women have any input in the hiring process? Will the interview panels be diverse? Will current female employees be available to speak to candidates about their experiences? Many times, the answer to each of these questions is no, and the resistance to make simple changes in these areas is striking.
  • We have to tell these companies to talk just as proudly about their parental-leave policies, child-care programs and breast-pumping rooms. At the very least, they need to communicate that their workplaces have cultures where women are valued. They need to show they’re not places where attitudes like that of the now-infamous Google engineer who wrote a memo questioning women’s fitness for tech jobs dominate.
  • executives balk at my suggestions and even wonder if explicitly talking about the place of women is sexist. But I remind them that when it comes to gender, they have to play catch-up, after long histories of eroding trust
  • Silicon Valley companies are in love with themselves and don’t understand why the love isn’t always returned by the few women to whom they extend employment offers.
  • I’m often asked which companies are getting diversity and inclusion right in Silicon Valley and across the country. Most aren’t.
Carri Bugbee

As diversity progress in Silicon Valley stalls, advocates call for a new approach - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...ty-fatigue-20180604-story.html

diversity silicon valley sexism women harassment

shared by Carri Bugbee on 11 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • Inconsistent messaging, such as when a company’s executives espouse the virtues of diversity but do nothing to drive change, can also lead to employees tuning out of the conversation.
  • many companies continue to focus only on recruitment instead of retention, which Blanche likened to seeing that the canary in the coal mine is having problems and throwing in 50 more canaries as a solution.
  • Rather than adopting platitudes such as “empower women,” companies should instead consider implementing rules such as “no interruptions during meetings,”
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  • Our language is getting in the way and creating an us-versus-them dichotomy,” Blanche said. “We need to talk more about belonging and less about diversity.”
  • If a company reports little progress on the diversity and inclusion front, it may make news, but there are no real consequences,
  • For those who advocated for diversity within their companies, the fatigue comes from pushing for change for so many years and seeing so little of it, Blanche said. And for those supporting, or even just watching from the sidelines, “we’ve been talking about diversity for so long, they’re exhausted hearing about it.”
  • Carri Bugbee on 11 Jun 18
     
    Inconsistent messaging, such as when a company's executives espouse the virtues of diversity but do nothing to drive change, can also lead to employees tuning out of the conversation.
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