Removing Bias from the Bottom Line - It's Time to Act

29 Sep 2015 03:00 PM

techUK is launching an industry-wide campaign to encourage tech organisations to train their staff to recognise unconscious bias and improve decision-making.

Groupthink refers to the phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group and may set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group. It's important for us to challenge groupthink and identify how it impacts our industry and the way we recruit, retain and promote talent.  Our decisions are influenced by our personal frames of reference which are formed by our values and beliefs. Our unconscious brain processes over 200,000 pieces of information every second whilst our conscious brain brings only 6 or 7 pieces of that information into focus.  Research has shown that 67% of employers with mandatory unconscious bias training had more equal rates of conversion from 'shortlist' to 'hire' for men and women during recruitment.

Why It's Important

techUK are passionate about increasing diversity in the technology industry. We believe that one of the factors influencing diversity is unconscious bias. We are therefore launching an industry-wide campaign to encourage tech organisations to train their staff to recognise their unconscious biases with the aim of minimising the impact bias has on decision-making. We have partnered with EDIT Development, a consultancy with specific expertise in Diversity and Inclusion, to deliver a suite of training options which we believe will suit every company size and budget that can be delivered at any location in the UK. These workshops aim to empower, educate and help delegates to:

• Discover the complexities that make up who we are and why we make the decisions we do
• Look at global future workplace trends and how to navigate through that, particularly through agility
• Explore ways to optimise your decision making processes to be more inclusive
• Uncover your frames of reference and ways to think more broadly to optimise decisions
• Identify how you act as a role model for inclusion and develop tools and techniques to be inclusive and enabling of difference
• Explore the cycle of personal development towards inclusion and tops tips as future guidance
• Discover tools to help develop your objectivity and reduce your subjective behaviour
• Discover how your biases and decisions play out in the way you connect or exclude others

All sessions are high impact and interactive designed to facilitate thought and action. The sessions aim to provide you with practical ways to tackle your own biases and provide opportunities for you to implement and reinforce what you have learnt in your day-to-day activity.

Workshop Options

To encourage as many tech organisations as possible to participate in the training, we are offering a variety of training options including:

• Half or full-day training held at techUK's offices. The first two sessions will be held on 5th November and 6th November.
• Half or full-day training held at the organisation's own offices
• 90 minute 'espresso' workshops held at either techUK or an organisation's own offices
• 60 minute webinars

Webinars and training held at techUK's offices will be 'open' sessions and costed on a per person basis. Training held at an organisations offices will be 'closed' sessions and costed on a 'per session' basis.

If you are interested in finding out more about any of these options, please contact the Women in Technology Programme Lead at sharon.clews@techuk.org.