小心！潜在的偏见可能毁掉公司

关于管理者应该如何避免无意识的偏见研究已经很多。但直接受到偏见冲击的员工受到的影响究竟如何？

非营利智库Center for Talent Innovation新近一项研究对白领员工感受到的偏见进行了量化，以及公司因偏见产生的损失。

“我们衡量了当员工认为公司制度不公、不合法时导致的损害。” 上周三晚在纽约市出席活动公布研究发现时，CTI的创始人兼首席执行官西尔维亚·惠利特介绍说。

该研究主要评估能力和抱负、承诺和人际关系、情商和执行力衡量人们的发展潜力。其实潜力是一种主观的无形特质，会受到无意识的偏见影响，却往往在公司的人事决定中起到重要作用。人们往往更容易看到别人人身上类似自己的潜力。

比如美国平等就业执法机构Equal Employment Opportunity Commission数据显示，在私营企业的经理和高管之中，白人和男性的比例分别高达86%和70%。

“数据显示，无论何时只要主观影响存在，局外人的身份会阻碍顺利发展。”广告传媒巨头埃培智的首席战略与人才官兼执行副总菲利佩·科拉克斯基说。

为了衡量美国企业员工的感受，研究人员请员工根据以上潜力的指标自我评估，然后问上级会怎样评价。对自我评估得分比估计上级评分高的员工，研究认为他们感到自己遭受了偏见。

研究显示，当员工感到有偏见时，企业的人才外流频繁，员工倦怠频发，同时企业的创造力和生产力都会下滑。

“我们有意把重点放在感觉上，也就是员工的自我感觉。为什么？因为这是他们生活的现实。”CTI的首席财务官兼研究主管劳拉·舍宾这样解释。

在遭遇偏见的员工之中，34%的员工过去六个月里不愿提供创意或解决方案，48%的人表示，工作期间在骑驴找马寻找跳槽机会。

但研究还显示，解决问题有三大要素。如果领导接受多元化，员工感到偏见的可能性会降低64%，如果是包容的领导，这种可能性会下降87%，如果员工有人支持，感到偏见的可能性会大幅减少90%。

乔治城大学教授苏卡里·平诺克执教该校的战略多元化与包容管理课程。在某些方面，上述研究采用的方法让她喜忧参半。平诺克说，查阅研究过程后，她认为用自我评估和估计上级评价之间的差别判断是否存在无意识偏见准确性存疑。

“我指导过100多位客户，合计管理360份评估。我可以说，客户和上级的评估很少能一致，这是常见情况，”平诺克称，“偏见是一种复杂的情况，无论是客户本人还是上级都一样。”

尽管平诺克质疑报告中的部分假设，但仍对报告表示赞赏。

她还说：“我的确认为这份报告做得很棒。对于女性和其他边缘群体在职场晋升受阻的原因，报告提供了新的认识思路。”

根据研究结果的一项建议——提供支持，CTI上述研究的17家合作伙伴之一奥美广告公司已经采取行动。奥美的首席多元化和融合推广官多娜·佩德罗说，公司设立了一个支持项目，旨在帮助表现突出的女员工获得更多成绩。

支持者和导师的角色类似，但支持者处事往往更深思熟虑，是更强大的职场盟友。导师制提供了提升的条件，而支持帮扶可确保员工真正获得提升。

“一些支持者最初只带一名员工，现在已经带四五个人。因为他们发现这种方法确实有助于培养人才，”佩德罗说，“人才是一切的根本。”

奥美广告公司希望拓展支持模式，将其他少数员工也纳入其中。

佩德罗表示：“我们对别人做的一些推测很多时候可能有偏差。假如我们主动接近同事，愿意相信他们，深入了解为人处事方式而不是想当然，工作环境会变得更好。”

在活动的结尾，CTI的首席执行官惠利特回顾了我们当前的政治环境。她说：“大家都很清楚，当代公司文化以及晋升道路上常常充满羞辱和伤害。”她表示。但她补充说，全国各企业都有能力做出积极的改变。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审稿：夏林

There's plenty of research documenting how managers should combat their own unconscious bias, but what about the toll bias takes on workers who experience it firsthand?

A new study from the Center for Talent Innovation quantifies the bias perceived by employees in white collar jobs and how that bias costs their companies.

“We measure the damage done when individuals see systems as unfair, as illegitimate,” Sylvia Hewlett, founder and CEO of CTI, said of the report at a New York City event to present the findings last Wednesday night.

The research used assessments on ability and ambition, commitment and connections, and emotional intelligence and executive presence to measure potential — an intangible and subjective characteristic that is shaped by unconscious bias, but often plays a significant role in personnel decisions. We’re likely to see potential in people who remind us of ourselves.

For example, manager and senior executive roles in the private sector are still 86% white and 70% male, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“The data confirms that being an outsider is going to put you at a disadvantage whenever subjectivity is involved,” said Philippe Krakowsky, executive vice president, chief strategy and talent officer at Interpublic Group.

To measure the perception of workers in corporate America, employees were asked to assess themselves on the indicators of potential and then asked how their superiors would assess them. The study recognized workers with better self-assessments than manager score predictions as perceiving bias in the workplace.

The research showed companies would experience less innovation and productivity as well as high costs associated with frequent turnover and burnout when employees perceived bias.

“We purposely focused on perception — the employee’s perception of themselves. Why? Because it is their lived reality,” said Laura Sherbin, CFO and head of research at CTI. And the costs of these perceptions are a reality for companies.

Of employees who experienced bias, 34% reported withholding ideas or solutions in the last six months and 48% said they looked for a new job while at their current job during the same time period.

But there are three key factors that shed light on solutions. Employees were 64% less likely to perceive bias at companies with diverse leaders, 87% less likely when they had inclusive leaders, and 90% less likely when they had sponsors.

Georgetown University professor Sukari Pinnock, who runs the school's Strategic Diversity and Inclusion Management program, had mixed feelings on some aspects of the study's methodology. After reviewing it, Pinnock said she's skeptical about using differing self-assessments and guesses at manager assessments as a marker for the presence of unconscious bias.

"As someone who has worked with over 100 coaching clients who have had 360 assessments administered, I can say that it is usually the case that client and the supervisor assessments are rarely aligned," she said. "Bias is always in the mix — on both sides of the equation."

While she questioned some of the assumptions in the report, she did offer praise for it.

"I do believe that this report was quite well done and brought forth new awareness of what keeps women and other marginalized groups from advancing to those higher rungs on the ladder," Pinnock added.

Ogilvy and Mather, one of the 17 partners for the CTI study, had already implemented one recommendation in the results: sponsorship. The company has a sponsorship program designed to help women excel that has seen success, said Donna Pedro, chief diversity and inclusion officer at the advertising firm.

While sponsors are similar to mentors, they tend to be more deliberate and powerful workplace allies. Mentors prepare people to move up, while sponsors make it happen.

“I have sponsors who started out with one sponsee and now have four or five because they they have really seen the positive of being able to develop talent," Pedro said. "I think that’s the bottom line in all of this.”

The advertising company hopes to expand the sponsorship model to include other underrepresented employees.

“We make assumptions about people and we can be wrong so many times,” she said “If we approach our colleagues and our coworkers and give them the benefit of the doubt and are curious about who they are and don’t make assumptions about them, I think we will be better off as a workplace.”

Hewlett, the CTI CEO, concluded the event by reflecting on our current political climate. “We know that our culture, our corridors of power are newly filled with humiliation and hurt,” she said, adding that companies have power to make positive change at a national level.