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WHAT SHOULD BE THE BEST POLICY TO CONTROL BIAS IN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?
Policies are made to keep the course of action towards organizational goals but, what should be the best policy to control bias in organizational culture. Is it possible to control it from interview till promotion?
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3 Answers
Wow ! What a great question Saleem.
For me there has always been a basic method that covers many areas of potential bias, whether these are racial, gender, physical, sexual orientation or religious belief. It is not by using a policy.
It has been to help and encourage Managers to judge people by what those people do – not by who they are.
This is easy where the jobs are 'mechanical', that is where performance can readily be measured. It becomes more difficult where results of what they do may be some time away or cannot easily be measured, or where the conduct of the employee (how they do their job) has to be assessed. There are ways to describe these cases, but that is another discussion.
This 'judge what they do' focus affects many HR areas. In recruitment, getting candidates to carry out (part) of the job gives more information about what they can do than an answer to a question at interview. In performance management it means concentrating more on agreeing what they are expected to do, and the way they do it, not on trying to score them. In termination it means accepting that the person is in the wrong job, and concentrating on who was doing the recruitment and helping them. And so on ...
Well, I can talk to the religious culture in the 70's to 90's. More than 1/2 of my career I worked at companies founded by Jews, with a large number of Jewish staff. I'm Christian. What I saw was us celebrating and respecting our differences.
We decorated the office for Christmas and added Menorahs, dreidels, etc.
We didn't hide religion (or politics). I knew who was Christian and who was Jewish and sent them appropriate cards at Christmas. I learned about being Jewish, about their holidays, etc. and they did the same.
And if by chance I said Merry Christmas to someone who was Jewish, they'd tell me they celebrated Hanuka and wished me a Merry Christmas, it was no big deal.
Tough one but can be done. Not in one day. Being biased is one of the oldest traits of mankind. Most of the time human being likes other human being for several reasons but surely not for the reason right or wrong. People liking may depend on several factors , same community, same race, same language, Similar living habits, similar religion & what not. It is tough to eradicate bias completely but it can be minimized to great extant if the top bosses of the organization start showing signs of non bias. People follow there leaders. If the leaders are honest & shows greater degree of non bias then automatically people down the ladder will follow. In the end i would say it has to come from ever individual then only it can be eradicated. Seems like ideal situation but it can not be done unless each of us start practicing it. Bias is the greatest enemy of professional expertise & application of knowledge into wisdom in general in life. It propagates mediocrity & incompetence.
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