Unconscious Bias in News
12th May 2014
Over the last few weeks Unconscious Bias has hit the headlines, demonstrating how interest and awareness in Unconscious Bias training is rising.
Unconscious Bias in the BBC
Close on the heels of comedian Lenny Henry’s passionate plea for greater diversity in television at a BAFTA lecture in March, the BBC announced that it had sent senior staff on Unconscious Bias training to stop them recruiting people in their own image. Read the article here.
Commenting on this development Jude-Martin Etuka, our Client Relationship Manager (Australia) said: It is well-documented that the BBC, for a long time, has operated processes and systems that have inadvertently ensured the maintenance of a predominantly ‘red-brick’ status quo.
To ensure that real behavioural change takes place across all aspects of an organisation, sending staff on Unconscious Bias training is not the solution. Rather, proactively demonstrating a desire for real organisational change, accompanied by a range of strategic initiatives, of which Unconscious Bias programmes are a constituent, is a positive forward step.
Unconscious Bias programmes will deliver measurable and tangible results for any organisation when there is a real desire to initially ‘look inward’ and think ‘differently’ about its recruitment and selection practices, and its general approach to people management and development processes.
Unconscious Bias in the police
Amongst the raft of proposals to reform the police stop-and-search powers announced by home secretary Theresa May to the House of Commons on Tuesday 29 April was a review of national police training that included “unconscious bias awareness training” to reduce the possibility of prejudice in officers’ approach to stop and search. Read the article here.
When the consultation on this work started last summer, people from a black and minority ethnic background were seven times more likely to be stopped-and-searched.
Vernal Scott, Marshall ACM’s Principal Consultant said: Unconscious Bias training complements equality and diversity training, but more than that, it has a positive impact on the quality of decision-making relating to recruitment, promotion, management practice, and in this case real time decisions made by police officers in their daily work.
An organisation that understands its unconscious bias will be more effective and satisfaction levels will be higher.
Our e-learning and classroom offerings
We currently offer an Unconscious Bias elearning course Breaking Habits , which was one of the first of its kind to be released in the UK. A US version of this course is also available.
We are also offering Unconscious Bias classroom training, facilitated by our Principal Consultant, Vernal Scott, author of God’s Other Children. Click here for details of the course.
Learn more
To find out more about our elearning or classroom training please complete the short form below or call us on 020 7936 9029.
