Check your unconscious bias

Layoffs aren’t going away. Since last week, job cuts have continued to surface at companies including Tesla, Netflix, Backstage Capital and Substack.

And while business needs drive job cuts, decisions about which individuals to keep aboard — as with so many other employment decisions — can be influenced by unconscious bias.

“You start with the theoretical: OK, we’re going to be business-minded. We’re going to be objective,” said Kieran Snyder, co-founder and CEO of the augmented writing software maker Textio. “But in the end, there’s human beings making decisions.”

I spoke with a few experts about how to keep unconscious bias out of layoff decisions. Here’s what they told me.

Use objective criteria where possible. Employees should be subject to ongoing review so managers have clear ways to evaluate them, said Chris Zatzick, professor at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.

• But, Zatzick warned, performance evaluations themselves can also be tainted by unconscious bias. Remedying this takes work long before layoffs start.
• Textio has found a pattern of biased feedback across organizations, identifying differences in the language managers use to give performance feedback across gender, race and age. For example, women get 22% more personality feedback than men, and are 11 times as likely to report being described as “abrasive,” Textio found.
• Making sure performance feedback is specific and actionable by giving examples and offering alternatives is key to keeping it objective, Snyder said.

Train decision-makers on unconscious bias. Many leaders are aware of the potential for unconsciously privileging employees based on traits like their race, age or gender. But many aren’t aware of their own biases, and should be challenged to confront them.

• In a hybrid environment, consider whether workers who spend more time at the office may be treated differently. Unless office attendance is a stated expectation, beware of letting proximity bias affect layoff decisions.
• Include multiple decision-makers in the process, and wherever possible, ensure diverse leadership is involved, Zatzick said.

Allow for open discussion and dissent. Leaders won’t necessarily agree on which employees should be retained. Ideally, execs should be comfortable asking questions and pushing back, Zatzick said.

• “You want to have an open, psychologically safe environment where people can express dissenting opinions: ‘Why is this person on your list? Can you tell me more about it?’” Zatzick said. “‘Oh, those don’t really sound like our criteria, so we need to be careful about including people on our list that don’t meet our criteria.’”
• Natalie Zhao, also a professor at the Beedie School of Business, agreed. “Leaders should be really candid,” Zhao said. “Human beings make mistakes, so be willing to honestly talk about it.”
• Creating an environment that allows for this type of dissent should take place before it’s time to make tough decisions like job cuts, however.

Because unconscious bias can affect all kinds of personnel decisions, from hiring and promotions to layoffs, it’s crucial that organizations work to root it out along the way rather than waiting until a crisis moment.

“The challenge for companies is you can’t always know ahead of time when you’re going to be in those moments,” Snyder said. “If you haven’t done the continual work, then it’s much harder to be fair and equitable when those moments do come up.”

— Allison Levitsky, reporter (email | twitter)